Falling Star
by FallingStarXan
Summary: In the near future, a reclusive young genius with an uncertain past finds herself in a world of danger, time travel, and mysterious blue boxes. ON (probably permanent) HIATUS. Don't read unless you're simply curious about my progress as a writer.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: This is a novel. It's about science and politics and terrifying monsters and dying and redemption and time. And energy. It all comes back to that: power. The power to change, and the power to resist change. It's also about funny stuff like fruit and running down hallways and the end of the world. I spent an entire summer on this so why let it go to waste? And so, without further ado: Falling Star.**

_There is no beginning._

_Just get that, right from the start, 'cause that's what you need to start with. Start in the middle, because that's all there is. You're born, right smack in the thick of things, and you just go along with it. What were you before that? Cells, proteins, atoms. Stardust. You never began. You won't end either. Neither created nor destroyed, circle of life, sort of thing. Take the universe. Set off by a bang, but that's only because it all crunched together, on the other end. If you find a penny and you go back in time and put it where you'll find it, where did it come from? An infinite loop. Self-sustaining paradox. Doesn't have to make sense. Just has to work. So there is no beginning. No end. Right?_

_Wrong. I'd know. I've seen it. Every second of it._

_That's who I am._

_You know how when you dream, you know exactly what's going to happen, because you're the one making the story but at the same time, you're living in it? And you remember the end but not the beginning, and the you that's walking through your dream wants it to end differently but the you that's watching and dreaming knows that it has to be the way you saw. And sometimes you see the back of your own head._

_That's me. Every day, every hour._

_It's night, and you're staring up at the sky, all the countless stars. Pretend that what they say is true. If you see a falling star, you'll be granted a wish. So you see a flash of fire across the sky. What if you wish that the star never fell? What happens then?_

_I happen. That's what._

_'Cause that's who I am._

_Actually, it is. Literally. That's me, right there. That falling thing you just saw. Hello. Did you see what I did there? I led you into a hypothetical scenario as a metaphor and then told you that the hypothetical event is actually reality. And it's funny because you're the one who's hypothetical, since I'm not actually talking to anyone in particular at present. Not now. Not yet. I'm a bit busy to talk right now. Busy, you know..._

_Falling._

* * *

><p>London<p>

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021

At about two in the morning, all the streets are quiet. All the clocks tick unnoticed in halls and on the tops of pantries. All the noise of the city blends into one long, drawn-out hum. Time has no meaning at two in the morning, as backwards as that may sound. Not to the sleepers, not to the dreamers. But the clocks still count it and the world still feels it pass, like wind in the trees. Maybe the clocks understood something. They just sit there, patiently counting. Watching the movement of something intangible, something that they piece together. The little pocket watch rested calmly on the windowsill. It looked very old, and in a sense it was; very, very old; but it had little tiny modifications to it that made it modern. It was an alarm clock, for one. It had been set to five-thirty, at which time a minute mechanism carefully placed inside the shell would open a circuit that turned on a nanocomputer that sonorously played a recording of church bells. Quite loudly, too. So, being set for exactly five-thirty (and it was always exact about the time, even when its owner forgot to wind it up), and it being exactly one-fifty-seven and thirty-four seconds, the watch's alarm went off.

Next to the windowsill sat a queen-sized bed, half-covered by sheets that were tangled and uneven from troubled sleep and restless dreams. It was big enough for exactly two human people and possibly a small dog and baby. But there was at most one human person ever lying in it, a person who was now awake from the unwise timekeeping of the watch. In the semi-somnolent stupor of the early riser, the figure groaned and tried to untangle the covers, succeeding but with fumbling, disoriented determination also stripping the bed of them entirely. The white of the fitted sheet turned silver and spectral in the lunar glow of night as the figure pushed back the curtains in an effort to find the tolling timepiece. Moonlight shone on long locks of fine, dark brown hair, draped over the shoulders of the young woman who was tangling with the watch. She tried to pull it open, but the top was stuck. She glanced at the modern clock on the wallscreen displaying the time in blue fluorescence. One-fifty-eight and two seconds. At that moment, the bells stopped mid-toll. Confused, the girl shook the pocket watch and muttered an angry word. She tried to open it once more, but the watch had shut like a clam in a bucket. With a sigh, the girl placed it on the sill and gathered the sheets in her arms. She untidily threw them back on the bed and curled up among them. The seconds marched on.

Then she sat up again, struck by an idea. The door to her bedroom opened moments later with a hum as the electronic lock unbolted, and she walked into the hall and down a flight of stairs, with the _crunch crunch crunch_ of creaky wood being trod upon. The house was small and full of ancient relics and scientific equipment, but it was all neatly arranged. The floor was clear of clutter, and only a desk in the little living room looked messy.

It was covered in thin plastic slides, papers, and a few large, fragile tomes open to pages of carefully copied Latin text. There also sat a thin, simple screen. The young woman pressed the corner of the screen, and it slowly illuminated itself. She cleared away some of the papers, revealing glowing letters in a QWERTY pattern. As soon as the screen had fully lit, she tapped her fingers on the desk: a password. The desktop appeared, and she touched an icon. It opened a screen full of data; letters and numbers and diagrams. The girl sat deep in thought for a few moments, staring at a point just above the screen, then glanced at a clear sheet that showed a set of chromosomes. She looked back at a book on the table, and quickly entered a series of numbers into the computer. She touched the screen again and a loading bar popped up on it. The girl brushed her hand along the side of the screen, and it dimmed. Then she pushed the chair away from the desk and got up. She walked from the living room into a kitchen, softly singing a carol in Latin, and searched through the refrigerator.

Holding a glass of milk, the young woman ambled back into the living room. The loading bar had a tiny slice filled.

"Oh, come _on_, you," she said to the computer, and drank the milk in a few gulps. She wiped her mouth and set the glass down on the table. "The Antikythera Machine would have been faster than _that._" She threw herself onto a couch and stared out the window, drifting back to sleep as she settled into a more comfortable position. Dreamily, she looked at the number on the corner of the barely visible screen. Two-oh-eight and twenty-seven seconds. She closed her eyes and pulled a soft cover over herself.

Then, there was a single bell. It must have been her watch, because it sounded just like it, but the watch was upstairs and to the girl's sleepy mind it sounded like it was far, far away. And it was richer, more mellow than she remembered the alarm being. It sounded like a real bell. And there was just one. Then there was complete silence. The girl's eyes opened and she focused her gaze on the window. The stars, usually so few in the suburbs on the edges of the city, seemed to cover the sky like a painting. She pushed herself up from the sofa and moved to the window, brushing aside curtains of blue filament, pressing her palms against the pane.

A bright, fiery streak, wide as a dime held up at arm's length, flashed across the sky, just below the waning moon, and faded. Suddenly wide awake, the girl stared at the clock, which said: exactly five-thirty.

Then she yawned, and waited for the bells from her room. Nothing. When she finally walked upstairs (after checking the computer screen, which now showed one-hundred percent completion), she saw that it was turning that blue-grey pre-dawn color. She searched for the watch, hoping to fix its clearly broken alarm, but she couldn't find it. The room was cold. She saw the reason why: the window was open (that was odd) and the curtains frosty from a few hours of winter air. Maybe she'd opened it last night for some reason and the watch, sitting right on the sill, had fallen out. Which in and of itself would be difficult to explain, because it wasn't like those cute alarm clocks that ran around in the morning to get you to chase them. And it was also heavy for a pocket watch, so it wouldn't get blown around by the wind. And it wasn't windy. Sadly, the girl shut the window, promising herself that she would look for the watch later, and, if it survived the fall, get it fixed. She had owned it for a long time, and made all the little modifications to it. It was actually funny how much wiring and computer bits you could fit inside it.

* * *

><p>If you saw the girl walking down any street, or riding the Underground, or in a cafe, you wouldn't think she was too special. Except the way she looked at everything so intensely with dappled green eyes sitting under dark eyebrows. Or the way she read scientific journals on busses, soaking up stories of new fossils that were found in South Africa, giant dinosaurs that had poisonous fluids dripping from horns on the sides of their faces, like spiders, or tales of caves deep in some tropical country with acoustics that were better than concert halls because of crystals that reflected the sound a thousand times over and if you sang, it sounded like a whole city was singing with you. But you'd still be alone, she reflected. Just you and the stones. She often reflected on what she saw, or heard, on solitary journeys through the throngs. Always reflecting, like a mirror. Like the windows of the subways in the gloom of the tunnels. Like the metal and chrome and glass that created the color scheme of the modern world. Always reflecting. A mirror, she thought, might be the loneliest thing in existence. Hollowed out by visions, with no color of its own, all it consisted of was an echo. We are all mirrors, she thought. No one can see what we really look like. All they see in us is themselves, shuffling back and forth like passers-by. And we can't see out of our silly silver shells.<p>

Even crowded among other people in a subway car, it was possible to be alone. Even walking through crowded streets, crushing beneath sneakers road salt prematurely scattered on the sidewalk, it was possible to be alone. Even on Christmas.

No one paid the girl any attention at all, as she walked through their world silently, with her long hair tied back in a simple braid. Had they cared, they might have been interested to know that the place she commuted to was the most prestigious university laboratory in most of Europe and much of the United States, founded in 2017 by a group of Nobelists and scholars and acclaimed scientists from nearly every field. Its stated purpose was to use the latest, most cutting-edge technology to explore new areas of science: ecological microbiology, archeo-meteorology, epigenetics. The building itself was not the original university building, which had been destroyed along with half of London on the Christmas Eve of 2019, when a large asteroid crashed into the Thames. This was common enough. It was generally accepted that a comet that circled the sun once a year was the cause of the fairly regular annual disasters. In London, Christmas was a time of joy, gift-giving, and celebration, much of which took place in deeply dug basements and sturdy graphene-reinforced steel bunkers.

It was difficult to explain just what caused disasters like the one that demolished the old university, but the effects were inescapable. And so the new Avalon University was to be constructed. Plans were drawn up to yield the maximum amount of genius per square foot, with complex facilities for every field; with chrome and fluorescence and calm female vocals issuing from the walls, with the newest nano- and pico-bots cleaning and scanning and ooh! maybe even some swishy doors! The new facility had so much potential. And yet the expense of rebuilding was beyond what the governments of the world could generously afford to spend. So the project was funded by Waterhelm, an energy company that sold a popular type of biofuel, and slowly transitioned from a home of scholarly discovery to a facility for scientific innovation, and yes, there is a subtle difference between the two.


	2. Chapter 2

_It has been said by people (the kind of people, I'm assuming, who make up little clever things to say, and I would know because I'm one of them) that the phrase that precedes a momentous scientific discovery is not 'Eureka!', 'I've found it!' but, 'That's odd...' Which is true. It also tends to be the phrase, in certain situations, that precedes momentous death, rivaling "Nothing can go wrong now," although far surpassed by "Who's there?" Because there are places and times where there is meaning in everything. That's how it always starts. Something... different. Then, suddenly, your whole world just fell apart. But it's still the same place. Just... a bit larger than you thought it was. You might even (maybe) say it was... bigger... on the inside..._

"That's odd..."

"What is?"

"This. This... look, right there, yeah, okay, now, tell me if that seems like it should be there." A quiet, low voice, all seriousness.

"Right in the middle of the sequence, or past the protomer?"

"Right there."

"Looks like a mutation of some kind, maybe an exposure to radiation. We see that all the time. Newer computers give off radiation like that in massive amounts; the quantum-spin ones, definitely. And you know what else does? Biofuel cells, the kind that we make? Not enough to hurt anyone, as long as you get annual screenings, obviously."

"Well, we don't actually manufacture the cells, no one knows how they..."

"Look, if you did an analysis on my DNA right now, you'd find those little errors all over it, and in yours too. Probably more than what you're seeing here, too."

"Very true."

"So how can this possibly be significant?"

Xan Russell looked at her skeptical colleague with a very innocent expression that had not the slightest trace of superiority. Had this been a lesser discovery, it might have been more smug, but right now, Xan was genuinely excited, and so spoke with the generous humility of giants.

"Because this DNA sample is a reconstruction that is almost two thousand years old."

"That... that..."

"One thousand, nine hundred forty-two to be precise." Smugness is, however, a bad habit harder to break from than salting soup.

"Then that'd be from..."

"79 C.E."

"From _Pompeii_?"

"It took a lot of work, reconstructing that genome. I mean, most of the bodies were fried to a crisp," Xan continued in the same steady, muted tone. "Rapidly and irrevocably oxidized. But there were many bodies that died of suffocation, and the molecules of the cells didn't completely break down. Still, I was working with fragments. If I hadn't actually seen the body, I might not have been able to tell you that the corpse was human. Mammal, yes. Primate, probably. Actually, I take that back. This was definitely human. Male - it's got the right chromosomes for it. And, um, probably middle-aged, because of the shortened telomeres. Or he could have just been out in the sun too long." Xan's voice had a cadence to it that she developed for talking about complex subjects to those who were ambivalent about science's worth. It was calm, firm, and confident, but very quiet. It was almost like a storyteller's voice. She made "rapidly and irrevocably oxidized" sound like "in a land far, far away."

"But... that kind of radiation wasn't even, well, _invented_ until... but... Oh, come on, that piece just got contaminated somehow," Xan's colleague told her, exasperated. Xan, however, was ready for the opposition, and, in fact, had purposefully steered the woman down this path so as to slowly dish out sweet victory. Xan was about to roll into her next line when she stopped and reflected on the abuse of intellectual advantages she was committing. _I really have to stop this_, she thought guiltily. _But it's so _easy_ here. It was easy in high school, and in college, now easy at Avalon. It can't be me. I think this generation just isn't... no, that's wrong too, why do I always _act_ like this, even in my own head? And then I analyze it. Like what I'm doing right now. I am _not_ a credible source for my own mind, got to be _some_ bias there, so shut up, shut up... _

"I checked other samples," she said through the din in her head. "And the corpse came from a collection from 1957, and it was stored in a secure, sealed environment using 1957-ish technology, which has many flaws but most certainly does not emit tau waves. They didn't have quantum computers back then. They didn't even know that tau particles existed. What I _believe_ (if, of course, the samples were not contaminated, which you're right in seeing as a possibility... okay, okay, a _likely_ possibility) is that there was some form of exposure to radiation that happened in Pompeii. If it isn't contamination, then something very abnormal happened there, something involving technology that humans only discovered two years ago."

"You said, 'that _humans_ only discovered two years ago,'" chimed in a man sitting by the computer two desks down. Xan shuddered at the attention. "So you're saying that some other..."

"Well, if we're going to get technical about my diction, I think I'll point out it isn't as unbelievable as it used to be. There are a lot more people who believe in..."

"Oh, right, and I'm sure you have an X-File on this..."

"No, look, I'm just kidding, I think it's probably some bizarre cosmic phenomenon but that isn't exactly my area of expertise so I came to you..."

"...just last week you were telling us that there was no comet, so I suppose you reckon it's an _alien_ come down from the sky every Christmas..."

There was no escaping it. Xan reflected that this could be seen as just punishment inflicted upon her for her vanity. The other scientists certainly believed this was so. It wasn't as if she spouted crackpot theories left and right. Not even little ones. Not even tiny little whimsies. Sometimes she noticed odd connections in history. Patterns. But a lot of the time they were things that she was sure had not even existed before... maybe before she came to Avalon. Her memories of life in the United States seemed to have blended together like a painting that's been sat on before it dries.

She only was making this finding public because it was the most conclusive evidence she had. This odd radiation cropped up in many points in history. Xan had found traces of it in two dinosaur fossils, but only two, and they had been from the same time period. Same year, actually. She couldn't date it that exactly, of course, but she knew they were from the same exact year because the bones were from two eggshells in the same prehistoric nest. Twin Psittacosaurs. And then there was the man who'd died in 1977, but he had been very strangely affected by something at some point in his life. He didn't say what before he died, but he did say when: during the London Blitz. Weird. And then that furniture belonging to one of the French kings. Double weird, because it wasn't like the French did anything interesting. Except when they were not the French but the Gauls and made interesting barbarians in the Classical Period. Okay, and there was the French Revolution (when they got tired of all their rulers being named Louis, which is fair complaint), and the Enlightenment thinkers, and, well, anyway, what is tau radiation doing in some old dresser that sat by a fireplace? Tau radiation seemed to affect little pockets of history, like a firefly on steroids lighting up for the merest moment once every few hundred years.

The hilarity had subsided. Xan bore it with patience, then pointed out, "I checked for contamination many, many times. This isn't even the first place that I've seen the effects of tau radiation in artifacts, and it wasn't all in DNA, either. Couldn't it be an anomaly that just shows up? It probably is something natural we don't know about. I just think it could be interesting, because of all the research that's being done and all the new particles that we're discovering." She shifted in her chair and hit a few buttons on the glowing keyboard, then picked up the papers that emerged from the printer seconds later.

"I'm showing it to the department head," she decided, and looked around the room. "We are supposed to be doing science here, and science is about..."

"Making bold conclusions," interrupted Xan's neighbor sarcastically.

"Daring to innovate," added someone behind her in mock earnest.

_Maybe_, thought Xan quietly (even in her own head, she could be quiet). _But mostly it's about learning for learning's sake, and no one wants to learn something that won't help them. Won't profit them..._

"Isn't science about finding out, you know, stuff?" someone interjected. The speaker was trying to follow the conversation, having entered at the wrong moment.

"But I'll go _find_ _out_ if anyone will consider this important," Xan said promptly, always one step ahead of people's train of thought. She gave everyone a dark Look (they all winced; it was very unpleasant to be at the receiving end of Xan's intense green glare) and walked out. All the scientists looked at each other and shrugged. What was the point of telling her that there was no point? Many of the scientists were actually interested in the study. But what did it have to do with energy technology? Even if the department liked it, it would go nowhere. The previous month, Xan had spent time working with the waste cells from the Waterhelm biofuel, trying to see if they posed some health risk. And now this tau radiation thing. Some people just didn't grasp the meaning of science. Instead, they poked it gently and watched it for hours, and wrote a report on what it did. Then they declared it sentient and told everyone who'd listen that grasping it was unethical. And probably causes global warming.

* * *

><p>"So."<p>

"So what?"

"My point exactly."

"It _does_ have to do with the technology, too," said Xan desperately. "Waterhelm biofuel produces tau waves when it's used."

"I don't care if it has _anything_ to do our biofuel. I'm an archeologist, not a corporate sell-out. I've always admired your initiative when it comes to these projects."

_Admired my initiative. Good god, woman! Did I get a gold star, too? A plus plus, smiley face. I'm a little old for that! _"Exactly! Yes! No one notices, but all we do now is work on the fuel, and we don't even know what it's made of!" Xan said to the woman sitting in front of her. The woman brushed a ringlet of golden-blond hair behind her ear and folded her hands together on the chrome desk between her and Xan. Xan looked at her and frowned.

"But...?"

"You don't know I'm going to object, Ms. Russell."

"Yes I do, you're going to say "but" and follow it by some kind of sage remark and shoo me away. It's very predictable when people do that." Xan looked her superior in the spot next to her eye. "I have a lot of evidence compounded on this..."

"Evidence for what?"

"I don't know exactly. But I really think I'm going to find out. Soon."

"Is this what you've been spending your time on all this month?" the woman said kindly. Xan held her gaze, and spoke firmly.

"Yes. It is." _Because what's the problem with that?_

"It sounds interesting, Xan (_she's never called me that before, what's up?_), but this kind of research is very risky."

"Risky? How? It's not actually a conspiracy, is it?" Xan responded with incredulity. "Ha ha?" she added, with emphasis on the question mark.

"No, no, what I mean is, this takes a lot of time to put together but doesn't have big results. You could spend all your time scouring the history books and archives for tiny patterns that only just appear after a year or so, and at that stage they are nothing more than... flecks of dust."

"Actually, this radiation isn't that rare if you know where to look. In history, I mean, not in the present. Look for famous events, that's one way. And strange happenings. The kind that people _don't_ talk about, though, not the other kind. I first found it in 2018, which was before quantum computers. It was in dinosaur bones. I was analyzing the DNA to see if I could figure out skin and feather color. It usually manifests strongly in only the skin, which makes me think it's from contact with an irradiated object. You can't see the radiation at all unless there was either prolonged or acute exposure. Being around computers puts the errors in bone cells, tissue cells, blood cells, even brain cells, because it's constantly entering our body, but if there was an object that was covered in tau particles, touching it would give you those harmless errors, but only in skin cells, unless you live in it or something. So I think this is an object that the people touched."

"You think that the victims... "

"Oh, no, not victims. All the bodies were dead from natural causes. The radiation couldn't kill anyone, there's actually a limit to how much a body can absorb, and that limit's, like, two rem..."

"That's good to know, but please don't interrupt. ...the _subjects _touched the same irradiated object, even though they lived in different eras, different epochs. This same object? Where on Earth did that idea come from?" the woman asked. Xan let out an exasperated huff of air. "You see what I mean, though, don't you, Xan? To you, this may not seem like a crackpot theory, and there probably is an interesting explanation, but I think someone like you could be doing a lot of good in another project. I'm scheduling a trip to work on excavating an Akkadian town, and I know that you're an expert in the language - that's impressive, by the way, there aren't many people who speak Akkadian fluently - so maybe you could assist us there."

Xan nodded and smiled, but only briefly, and a bit coldly. "I'll think about it, definitely. Thank you, Doctor Song. May I be excused?"

"Of course." Dr. River Song watched Xan leave the office, and thought about her. Xan was intense and smart, _very_ smart, and if there was anything to this tau wave study, Xan would find it. But she spent a lot of time working. River Song had never heard of the girl going to a party, and she rarely talked of anything other than academics. To her, though, academics were rich enough to live off of. As far as Dr. Song knew, Xan had never even gone on one date, and certainly had no partner right now. Xan just sat around and thought about things. Or she practiced martial arts. Apparently she was quite formidable, which no one would be surprised to hear. She was adept socially when it came to getting her way, but otherwise she never bothered. River Song shook her head. Xan might be good at many things, but she wasn't that good at life.

* * *

><p>Xan had a very distinctive gait. She walked quickly, but gracefully and quietly. She looked at everything she passed by, but could make it so that none of it looked at her. So, after she left Dr. Song's office, she flowed through the white hallways like an inquisitive mist, rarely looking directly in front of her but somehow never bumping into anyone. She noticed that a light down a hallway she didn't go down was out, and guessed that it was because of experiments in the wing. A plant in the main rotunda had an aphid on it. Probably it was brought in from a garden, because an aphid would have a hard time making its way to this plant from the outside. But wait, it was winter. Where did the bug come from? As Xan reached the door to her lab, she saw a dead fly lying prone upon the smooth floor. She paused respectfully and thought about flies. She knew that they saw over two hundred images per second (or some large number), so they experienced a short amount of time very slowly. Does every creature, she wondered, experience their life span to be the same, even though it isn't? Does however long a fly lives feel like ninety years to it? But humans aren't really designed to live for ninety years, are we? Maybe we actually experience more subjective life than other creatures do. We certainly fill up our minutes with a lot of thought. Well, at least, I do. I don't know about some people.<p>

She turned the door handle. All of the scientists in the room looked at her, pausing their work. Xan Looked back.

"She likes my initiative," Xan said primly, hoping that this would make them laugh. Instead, her coworkers gave each other low-lidded, exasperated glances. _I didn't mean it like that! _she thought. "And then she said it was risky." Eyelids and brows shot up again.

"You mean, like a conspiracy?" said the man who had been lost in the previous conversation. Xan threw herself onto her chair, which rolled to her desk, and ignored him, turning her eyes back to the computer.

"Oh, she's not at liberty to tell," said someone else. A few people laughed. Xan huddled in her chair and listened to the conversation flow. "You know, Song is really nice, but I think she thinks Xan's a nut." A couple more smirks appeared. _Please get off this stupid topic_, Xan thought. "Song's always watching what she does, and 'encouraging' her. As if she's some high-functioning autistic." This was probably an accurate description of River Song, but Xan gritted her teeth. They made it sound as if it were _true_.

"Good thing she never checks up on this room," said a woman. "Remember that time you made all those picobots?" This last remark was directed at a yellow-haired man who was fiddling with a desk toy. He was the one who had mentioned the conspiracy. The man looked up, and grimaced.

"There were, oh, I dunno, a hundred of 'em," laughed a young Scottish scientist who had his table by the window. "And all programmed to clean the floor with that soap stuff..."

"Well, I like my floors clean," said the robot-maker indignantly. "And I didn't make them at all, they're standards. I had to clean up that spill..."

"...but they got into the thermos Sandy always brings and started spraying hot tea at everyone, and the whole place smelt like tea for a week..."

"No! _You_ left that thermos open," he said, affecting indignation as he pointed an accusing finger. "_You_ left it open and let all the bots get in and blamed me just because I was the one who programmed the bots to refill!" Laughter erupted from all around the two as the scientists remembered the incident.

"What are you planning to do over Christmas?" asked the man by the window, whose name was (Xan thought) Colin Montague. "Sit around and make picobots to attack all of us - _oh_! _You're_ the one who's been doing everything at Christmas every year, don't lie to me, 'cos I got you found out, oh yes I do!" Now all the young scientists were in hysterics, partly at their coworker's expression of disbelief that morphed quickly into disdain, and partly because they considered the idea and did not find it beyond the realm of possibility.

_What, everything?_ asked Xan in her head. She feigned busy work. If she had been able to concentrate, she would have actually been working.

"Doesn't this sound just like him: '_Oh hey, I think my giant spaceship might have gotten loose, and all my Santa drones, could someone help me? I guess the repairman left the door unlocked, what an idiot, but I'll take care of it, it won't_"- the man gasped for air - "_happen again._' That is _so_ you!"

Xan considered this. The _spaceship_? With the _Santa drones_? That was so long ago, it would have happened when she was (she calculated) eleven! That man (she didn't know many names) would have been about the same age. She considered an eleven-year-old version of the alleged troublemaker. The thought struck her as funny, and she almost spoke, but then shook her head and looked back at her computer. Then she thought about what she had just said in her mind. _Did I say, '_wouldhavehappened_ when I was eleven'?_ _What does that mean? I guess that I don't even remember hearing about it then. I grew up in New York City, not London._

Xan paused for a second and tried to remember if she had, in fact, heard about the so-called "Christmas Invasion." The more she thought about it, the more she felt that she _had_ known about it, but there was some kind of context to the information that made her brain store it in a funny place. She almost had it...

"So I suppose the giant meteor last night was you just warming things up, eh?" The silly joke was still going, it seemed.

"I saw that!" Xan said, surprise pulling her thoughts off their rails. "I thought I was dreaming. So you saw it too?"

The man who spoke looked at Xan, who rarely joined in their conversations, and said carefully, "That's right. It was something, wasn't it?"

Xan remembered someone mentioning the comet when she had been in the room before. A slight tingling seemed to start in her right foot. Then she realized it was falling asleep and moved it, which rather spoiled the drama. She collected her thoughts. Could it be possible? And if it was, wouldn't that mean ... something? Even if she was wrong, then she still might find the answer to a different question, one that everyone seemed to ask. _And since I remember seeing it, maybe I can do a bit of calculation and find out where it went..._ Xan had heard of the Christmas... 'occurrences' seemed to be other only good word that wasn't biased and extreme, like 'catastrophes'... but never actually experienced one. There had been a lull in activity for the past few years when she had been living in London, and she also didn't really remember hearing about...before... not like this... But now, she might find the missing link.


	3. Chapter 3

I Don't Know Where I Am

I Don't Know When I Am

I Don't Know _Who_ I Am

But.. Here I Am

Probably It's Christmastime

(Again)

If I were, in fact, a star, I'd say that I just went nova and now my head's full of stardust. All I can see is... sky. And... a roof? Of a building? Oh no, don't tell me I crashed into someone's house? Again? Now their old granny'll come out and beat me with a newspaper. That would be so embarrassing. Or a lawsuit. That would be worse. And I feel... so... sick... I think I need a doctor. Heh. Well. Sit up, now. Keep going, keep going.

Legs! I've got legs! Sweet Gallifrey, I've got human parts! Yes! Wait... back up...Didn't I already establish that I am, in fact, in human form? Again. And legs. Already? Never mind. But... I don't feel too different, anyway. I think I'm still... male. And what am I doing lying down again? I just sat up.

This floor... stone? Linoleum? Not wood. Yes, I think it's probably linoleum. Industrial-strength linoleum. Plastic. Hint of nanofibers. Wallscreens. So this is the twenty-first century. Earth. Good old Earth. Why am I thinking about the floor? Why am I on the floor? Get up!

OW.

What was that doing there? Stupid thing, don't you know I'm the Lord of Time?

Wow. I sound drunk. Better stop that. But that thing! A beam of wood or something? Ow, ow, ow, dammit, now my head really hurts. As if it didn't before. But that was more... metaphysical.

I have a head!

Ow. Ugh. I hope I didn't just break my skull. It's brand new. Is there a warranty? Feels bruised, not too bad. Got a strong head. That's good. Good strong head.

Wait. Hair! I've got hair (sometimes I don't. Well, okay, once). What is this hair? What color is this? Is it... please please please... ow. That hurt. But! Let's see. Brown! Damn! Again? And it's practically the same color. Practically _exactly_ the same color. Well, I liked that hair too. I liked...

_...the universe will sing you to sleep..._

_...I don't want to go..._

I have to get up. Have to get a grip on myself. Why am I so sentimental all of a sudden? Shouldn't be like that. Shouldn't be... can't see _anything_ now... all blurry...

_**Help me.**_

WHOA! Hold on _right there_!

_**What? What? WHAT? WHA- **_

What is this? Why do I... I sound like... no. No, this is just some kind of horrible cruel joke. I can prove it. I can prove it. My brain. Playing tricks on me. All messed up. Turned inside out. Can't think straight, so I hear things... wrong. I probably didn't say anything at all. Just an echo. An echo. My mind is all full of stardust. And I just hit my head on a plank of wood. No wonder it's all... wibbly wobbly...

_**Wibbly. Wobbly. Timey. Wimey. Stuff... I know that voice!**_

_**'Allo! I'm the Doctor. I'm... the... **_**Doc**_**-tah... Allons-y! What?**_

_**What happened to me? What... what **_**didn't**_** happen to me? **_

This is... impossible! And... could it be possible? It happened before. But I _did_ something there! Put it all in the hand. Not like I could have done something like that and not _known_ about it. I don't even have anything like that hand anymore! I'm not a starfish! You can't just keep on lopping off body parts! And it was my time! The _end_ of my time! The end of my _song_... Could they have got it wrong? _Could_ they have made a mistake?

Heyyy...Maybe I'm anotherone. Anotheronelike_him_. Maybe it happenedagain and I justdidn'tknowaboutitwouldn'titfeelweirdifIhadbeenhimthat'swhatIthought. No! No way, I'm me! I'm _the_ me! I'm _the_ Doctor! Not some knockoff metacrisis... _version_. Of me. Me! I'm... me! I'm ME! I'm... ohhh YES!

Isn''dbecomebutI'msosurprised_now_... now that I'm _me?_

But I'm not. Of course I'm not. I can prove it. This could never happen. If it did, I'd be about to _die_ right now, because I wouldn't have healed and why do you think this happens to me, it isn't because I _want_ it to, it's because I'm going to _die_ otherwise...

Oh no. Nowondermyheadhurts.

Oh, but it's not so bad now. Thinking'sgettingclearerandclearer.

I can prove it. Voices don't mean anything. My throat's gotten all wonky, that's it. Going to end this silliness right now. Because, of course, ifIwere_him_... I'd still have... I mean, the hair _felt_ right but there's another way to tell...

I've still got them! On the sides! Of my head! And the nose feels right, and I'm just about the right height...

I need a mirror. I need one NOW.

I can hardly walk, but I can crawl, I suppose. Watch the head. Okay. Climb up.

Wow. I landed hard. And this place... Oh. . Provesthatthisissomekindof...factory. Oh. It's an _abandoned_ factory. So. Well! No harm done! No harm... OWW! OW! WHYYYY? THESE BLOODY WOODEN BROKEN THINGS!

Ceiling beams. Okay, maybe my fault. A bit. I did crash through the ceiling. I did... OH NO! MY TARDIS! Is it... _smashed?_ NO! Oh. Oh, it's okay. I think. Probably needs some fixing. A lot of fixing. But not too bad. It isn't... dead.

I NEED A MIRROR!

Windows. Got smashed. Glass is all dusty. Maybe...

Ow.

Oh, good idea. Fiddling with broken glass. Big ol' genius. THERE I AM! I'm still... me! Not too clear, better if I had a mirror but... there I am. Here I am. Come to think of it, where the... where am I? And who are you?

* * *

><p>Just Outside London<p>

December 22nd, 2021

Cold winter sunlight painted a pattern on the broken wall of the factory, one that moved slowly with the hours. Dead vines in great tangles hung from it like earrings. A door was seated unsteadily on its frame.

At a touch it swung in. The hinges broke and the metal made a muffled crash as it landed in a dirt, rock, and vine-covered patch of floor. The whole building seemed to waver gently at the impact.

A shadow fell across the doorway and passed over the hard floor. It floated on the surfaces and flowed gently, silently over the gaping, rubble-filled hole. A hand lifted up a circle that was blinking with light. Graceful as a heron, the figure shifted and moved, stepped over beams of wood scattered across the floor like pick-up sticks. It held the device up to the light and started as numbers appeared on a miniscule liquid crystal display.

"No, no, no... this is wrong..." Xan muttered as she watched the readings. Impatiently shaking the device, then flicking her thumb over it like it was a scroll wheel, Xan tried to readjust the setting on the scanner. "Come on... c'mon... Did you switch over from metric again?" Her lips tightened in her focus, curving into a smile on one side and dropping into a frown on the other. She turned slowly, watching the lights and shifting back and forth like someone holding a compass.

Then she breathed out, an exhalation of air suspended over many seconds. Her eyes, which had been in a squint, grew wide, and her pupils shrank to pinholes to compensate. "That's not even... possible..." Xan said to herself through an astonished, excited grin that had stretched itself across her face. "Not possible," she repeated reverentially. Xan was thrilled. Here was a mystery, something she did not understand, something new... And she could figure it out. "I was _right!_ I was right, I can't _believe_ it..."

"Can't believe what?" A voice drifted up from somewhere inside the rubble. There was a muffled curse as a skinny limb emerged from the piles of wood. Xan's smile slipped sideways and then sidled off. She hadn't expected this. It dampened her spirits in a foggy, humid way.

Another thump, and an _ow_, and the top half of the intruder emerged from the wreck, wincing in pain. He saw Xan staring at him, half turned, with an expression of aloof indignation and suspicion. It was like he had crawled out from under her sink. "Little help over here?" the man asked peevishly, as he slid back down in spite of his efforts to haul himself out. When he lifted himself up for another attempt, he saw Xan looming over the pit, her eyebrows halfway up her forehead.

"What are you doing?" she said at last.

"Um. I'm trying to get out of this hole," he began.

"An admirable aspiration. Why are you in the hole in the first place?" He offered a hand, and a heartrendingly pitiful expression. "Could you maybe help me up?" he pleaded.

With seemingly little effort, and even less of a shift in expression, Xan knelt by the depression and dragged the strange man from the hole. He wavered on the lip of the pit, trying to stand, and collapsed over Xan like a giant lead blanket. "My _head_," he groaned. Xan stiffly extricated herself and laid the man on the floor, who wiped his forehead and then casually rested an elbow on a skinny knee.

"So just out of generosity, you know, as a sort of confirmation of reality and of my condition and the laws of physics and causality and all those reassuringly constant aspects of the universe, since I'm sure you're a very kind and compassionate and amenable person, could you maybe possibly tell me what year-"

Xan fixed him with what was less of a look and more of an optical scan. Unnerved, the man shut his mouth and crabwalked backwards a few inches, edging away from the girl. Then his gaze focused on her hand, and Xan followed it. Then she slowly lifted the scanner and held it in front of the man, who had backed all the way to the wall, and light spilled out from between Xan's fingers. There was a noise like a popped balloon, and smoke, and the light went out.

"What was that supposed to do?" asked the man, a bit alarmed.

Under her breath, Xan uttered a word that sounded like a mangled Neanderthal swear. "Well, it detects radiation and now it's... broken? Did you just break my expensive equipment that took forever to request because no one believed that my study was-?"

Rather than taking affront at the somewhat ludicrous accusation, the man gave the scanner a cursory glance and tipped his head to one side. "Is it broken?" he cut in. "Doesn't look broken to me, the bulb just went out; not strong enough in my opinion. You need better receptors, too. That thing has, what, copper and tungsten? Can't use that, got to be a stronger alloy, or a crystal."

"It's made to be precise. For minute, trace amounts of radiation. _Trace_ amounts. I didn't think I was excavating _Chernobyl_ or something! What the hell happened to you? You've got deadly amounts of tau radiation in your body, and how is that even possible?" "Well," the man told her, giving Xan a faraway look. "It's not technically impossible if you've been exposed to a conduit propelling the radiation and using it to generate a large-amount-of-energy-but-if-you-sequester-the-radiation-in-a-disposable-device-then-the-body-can-naturally-dispell-it-over-a-relatively-short-period-of-time-but-of-course-I-couldn't-do-that-_this_-time-but-I'm-just-saying-you-know-it's-_possible_." Halfway through this, the man had begun to speak very, very quickly. Xan watched him and put her head to one side. Some valve had opened in her mind, some switch turned on. She felt like she was disconnected from herself.

"I suppose that makes sense," she said the moment he finished.

"It _does_?"

"Yeah," she said, brightening. "And if you had some kind of pure energy being produced by a generator... there could be a way of pushing more radiation into the body than possible if it created mutations in the cells that destroyed epigenetic tags, turning them back into stem cells, and you'd have a sort of supersaturated body, but if you could reconnect the tags somehow halfway in then the particles would all be knocked of the genome and would concentrate in an object or surface the body touches, with a massive release of energy, because of the re-forming bonds, and so forth. And it would reconstruct damaged cells. I did research on something like this not too long ago, and I think it might actually be feasible with some slight modifications to the human genome, but..."

There was a pause in the conversation, as both parties considered what the other had just said. The man sitting on the ground seemed to focus his gaze on a point above Xan's head. He coughed, and opened his mouth to speak, but Xan beat him to it and asked calmly, "But that doesn't really explain what you are doing here, does it?"

"It might...actually..."

"What happened here? What happened to you?" Xan looked up at the graying sky. "Looks like it might rain," she observed inconsequentially. "Or snow. Smells like it, too." _This is fun,_ she thought. _Why am I having fun with this? I'm _talking_ to someone._

The man sniffed. "Yeah, you're right." He dragged himself upright, but folded over again. He sat, leaning on the wall. Xan waited. Then she crossed her arms.

"So...?"

"Sorry?"

"What. Happened?"

"Oh! That. Yeah. Right." The man nodded and looked to Xan piteously. She blinked, but didn't move. "Crash," he said finally. "Car. Crash. I was just outside, driving into..." And here he paused, and shuffled over to the window. After a quick glance outside, he continued, "London in... my car. And then... _then_ this giant flaming _thing_ comes flying out of the sky." He demonstrated. "Whoosh! Then it hit... here. And my car. It... er... crashed. I got out. Came here, sat down. Felt dizzy, 'cos I hit my head and all. In the crash. The car crash. Oh! Um. My name's John Smith." Looking very pleased with this summary, he extended a hand. Xan shook it carefully.

"Xan Russell," she returned.

"What? Sam?"

"No. _Xan_, as in Alexandra."

"I see. Nice to meet you, Alexandra."

"Xan. Not Alexandra." The man wore a look of skepticism. "But you just said that..."

"I _prefer_ Xan over Alexandra," she explained.

"Yeah, but Xan's not really a _name_, is it?"

"Yes, it is. It's my name. What's wrong with it?"

"Not 'Alex,' then?"

"Xan."

"Allie? Al? Alexandricalaranidoriael? I knew someone by that name once. Not that nice, really. Bit of a piece of work, her. Then again, she also went by a short middle section of her name, so maybe that's not the best example."

"I'd go with Alexandricalaranidoriael, actually." Xan turned her head to one side. "It's got a nice ring to it."

"Xander?" asked the man giddily. He seemed to be exulting in nothing less than the sound of his own voice. "Andra? Alexa? Lex? Not even 'Dra'? Nice short name."

"Are we on a first-name basis here, anyway?"

"Are we on a nickname basis?"

"It's not a nickname. It's Xan."

"Oh, so it's an _adjective_, then..."

"My _name_ is _Xan_. Are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Xan gave him another long, evaluating look. "Well, you _were_ in a car crash, you're covered in radiation, I suppose from the meteor-"

"The meteor? Oh yes, the _meteor_. Was that what it was? Er-hem. Of course."

" -you say you hit your head. Did you call for help?" She began to walk towards the rubble, more curious about the meteor than this aberrant, bizarre man. If he kept talking, she might be forced to ignore him altogether.

"Did I...? You mean like on my cell? Or just start yelling as loud as..."

"On your phone," said Xan as she squatted in front of the wreck and tried to look inside.

"I... it broke. In the car crash."

"Could I take a look?" the girl asked, emerging from the debris and starting to turn around. There was a panicked rustle and a mechanical, buzzing, whistley noise. The man tucked something away into his brown pinstriped suit and handed Xan an ancient phone. She flipped it open (_who has flip phones anymore_, she thought, _except for hipsters?_) and looked at the fuzzed screen.

Instead of handing it back, she focused on it with an intense stare. Her eyes flicked back and forth, and then, possibly deciding that this did not further her investigation, absently tossed it the man's way. "It's dead," she said, with the air of a paramedic. "Radiation overload, it looks like. Transceiver's fried."

"I know, right?" the man said innocently. "That old thing."

"I have some questions," Xan stated, forehead furrowed with thought.

"Yeah. I noticed."

"If you crashed nearby, what were you doing in the wreck from the meteor?"

"I was, er, looking for something?"

"Looking for what?"

"Anything. I was curious. And a bit... dizzy. You know."

"And then you passed out?"

"No, I decided to take a little siesta. What do you think?"

"You say you _saw_ the impact?"

"Whoosh." He gestured again.

"So I've been told... and what did-?"

"What do you know about this meteor?" he suddenly asked.

Caught severely off guard, Xan's tongue stumbled over the start of her response. "The- a-apparently it's part of a comet, it comes every Christmas. That's what some people _say_, anyway... what do-?"

"How do you know about tau radiation?" he persisted, beginning to stand up.

"I work with it, but..."

"So you're a scientist?" His speech had begun to accelerate.

"Is that suspicious in any way? Because you said that as if it was..."

"What are you doing with a radiation detection device like that? That's not something you can just request, regardless of the century. That's government issued. What are you doing with it? Who do you work for, exactly?"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING ASKING ME ALL THE QUESTIONS?" Xan exploded.

"Well, I..."

"THAT'S MY JOB!"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

"YOU TELL ME FIRST!" "FIRST YOU TELL ME _WHY WE'RE YELLING_!"

The two looked at each other. An unspoken agreement was made, and a temporary truce appeared to be called. Xan sat down and leaned on the wall next to the man and scrutinized him. The man, for his part, looked her briefly in the eye and then very hurriedly flicked his gaze away. She was giving him a Look.

Xan considered what to do. She had never met anyone who acted like this. It was like finding a chicken in your backyard and having it moo at you.

For that matter, she had never met herself acting like this. She decided to blame the man, because the more she studied him, the weirder she felt.

John Smith was a tall, skinny man who seemed to flop his body around differently than other people would. Like right now. He was sitting with his back to the wall, but while a lot people might tuck their knees in, like Xan had, or maybe even sit cross-legged, John Smith had one leg splayed out and the other bent under it at a weird angle. Even as Xan wondered about this, he twisted to one side and pulled the leg out and began to move his foot back and forth, fidgeting with his sleeve as he did so. He didn't slouch, but he just... adjusted his body to fit the space. Just like... she thought... a puppy, maybe. The thought made her grin inwardly. He also acted like a person with ADHD who'd drunk ten cups of coffee - or tea, she reminded herself - and eaten a pound of sugar for breakfast, and then taken a _really_ cold shower.

He simply wore himself so very casually it was strange. He had on a suit, but not a formal one. His brown hair was messily combed into something that stuck out over his forehead and made countless skinny, pointy locks. He was clean-shaven save for long sideburns, and he had a thin, sharp nose. Having lived and worked in London for a few years, Xan had begun to figure out the different kinds of people living in the United Kingdom, and decided that he looked vaguely Scottish, although his accent was one of the British ones - Estuary English, if Xan was figuring it correctly. As a (part-time) linguist, she really felt that she had an obligation to know this.

And his eyes... Despite the fact that Xan was headstrong and sometimes quite bold, she rarely looked people in the eye, especially people she didn't know. Even as she glared at John Smith, she directed her gaze at a point near his ear. Because even if she _was_ the kind of person to make eye contact, she would have been very uncomfortable meeting his gaze. His eyes were an ordinary coffee-bean brown, with sharply defined irises in ovals of white, but had some kind of quality that had made Xan decide early on that his situation wasn't, for example, the result of a particularly enthusiastic holiday party. His eyes focused with the precision of a camera lens, and deep inside them there was something flickering. The tiny reflections in his pupils did not seem to match what he was looking at, and somehow the brain was tricked into thinking his eyes were black, or red, or... well, if thought had a color, then his eyes would be the color of thought. Xan had a weird feeling that if she looked at him any longer, he might... do something unexpected. And possibly invasive.

John Smith was having trouble looking directly at Xan, too, because of her guarded expression.

"What?" he finally said, eyebrows lifting.

"I'm waiting for you to say or do something unexpected," said Xan truthfully. Smith, rather than looking surprised, seemed to understand the thinking behind this statement and shrugged.

"Fair enough. Although," he added, raising a finger, "if I do in fact say something unexpected, you will have been expecting it so it wasn't."

"Wasn't...?"

"Unexpected."

"Ah. A paradox."

"Ooh. You're right. I hate them. Always getting in the way of perfectly good fun. Oh, you can't do that, because if you do, then you won't have done it in the first place. Such a joy-kill."

"I'm going to see if I can find that meteor," said Xan, standing up very quickly. Xan had a very distinctive way of standing up, too. She never used her arms, simply pushed herself upright with her legs, keeping perfect balance. It was a bit strange to see, like watching a folded construction lift rise. _This surreal conversation,_ she thought, _has gone on far enough. _

The heap of rubble turned out to be deeper than she imagined. There had been, Xan realized, a basement to this old factory. Whatever had fallen had not only crashed through the top few floors, but also into the dust and dirt below. Once she made it through the mass from the upper stories, she saw the extent of the damage. The wall and ceiling had collapsed in, exposing to a wide circle - or crater - a shaft of cloudy light. Then, after all that, it looked like even more of the precariously hanging roof had broken, covering the site. She marveled at the level of destruction. To find what she was looking for, Xan would have to navigate tunnels of wreckage. She thought about what she wanted to do, and what someone with a lot of curiosity and sense of drama (but little sense of survival) would have done. The best thing to do would be to get a team up here. No sense wandering through a dangerous impact site looking for an extraterrestrial object alone.

Xan slid her legs over the side of the hole and probed for a floor. She found, instead, another joist that made a shallow decline into the pit. She stamped on it as hard as she could. It barely moved. She put her weight on it. This time it shifted a little bit. _Oh, what the hell. _Xan stepped carefully onto it, and began to creep along its length.

John Smith had been investigating the floor immediately around him. He picked up a splinter of wood and sniffed it. Then, as if it displeased him, he made a face and put it down. "She's right. Radiation _everywhere_. I probably... smell of it... too...ugh. That's _potent_. Almost like a... a musk. Eau de huon, I suppose." He stuck his head out of his shirt. "Well, I guess you'd better be off now, no point hanging ar- _What d'you think you're doing?_"

"Looking." Xan's braid was all he saw, vanishing from view, as she leapt down from the beam. There was a very quiet _pa-pat_ as she landed. Then a few more steps and a _tang_. More steps were followed by more gentle _pat_s or _tanngg_s or _thwup_s, depending on the material that was being jumped onto. Smith rushed to the edge and nearly fell as he tripped over a beam. Levering himself up with a stray pole, he stared down. "Oh no," he said to the world at large. "She's one of _those_ people."

"One of _what_?" drifted a response from the site. It sounded affronted.

"I...er... you could hear that?"

"It echoes a little down here," said the voice darkly. There was a _thwuppp_, and a metallic shriek as someone pushed a rusty sheet out of their way.

"I meet a _lot_ of people like you, you know. Always curious about... stuff." He had been about to say something else, but stopped and changed course very quickly. Then he hauled himself once more upright. For a moment he had the glazed look of someone who had been lying down for some time, got up, and now had a red haze fuzzing out everything he was trying to see. His eyes refocused and he carefully began to descend into the dim area. "How about you come back and tell me about all this... fascinating science you're doing?" he suggested. "Why don't we... um..." His foot caught on a wire and he ungracefully took a shorter route down.

"I hate my life," he said, flat on his back. He looked at the impromptu roof of wall and wreck. "I hate my death worse," he added, folding his body upright. "Wait up, you!"

Xan paused and headed back through the jungle. "You didn't have to follow me."

"Well, this is a stupid idea."

"How so?"

"Dangerous... sort of..." He pointed vaguely upwards at the overhangs of timber.

"Oh, well. _Danger_. Why not?"

Smith smiled charmingly, but said, "You should probably leave this to experts, too," making it clear in his tone who he was referring to.

"I _am_ an expert. _You_ should follow your own advice."

"Oi! Just 'cos you got a radiation detector, that makes you an expert?" Scorn oozed like sap over an intruding prehistoric fly.

"No, just 'cause I got a profession that requires extensive knowledge of science, history, and excavation with forensic applications, you... irradiated... man!"

"So that makes you, what, an archeologist?"

"In a loose sense, yes."

"Ha!"

"What's so funny about that?"

"I point and _laugh_ at... where are you going _now_? Get back here!"

"Follow if you like," said the retreating voice.

"Well, fine," said John Smith, getting to his feet and shaking off the last dizzy spell impatiently. "I just want you to know that I am in no way your sidekick here. That is completely backwards and wrong and I am following out of a concern for your safety, which you clearly do not seem to understand, and... _hel_lo?" He stooped and picked up what looked like, to his bemusement, a clear, plastic... maybe a cross between a hand grenade and a human heart, but see-through. It was empty. He held it up and looked closer. Not _completely_ empty; a golden residue had collected at the bottom. He took out a skinny, grey, pen-like device and directed a blue tip at the object. It made a mid-to-high-pitched whine as the tip lit up. He turned the container over. There was a click, and he made a noise of approval. Replacing the grey device in his inner coat pocket, Smith began to take apart the container. It had a few chambers, which he scrutinized and placed on the ground, and he carefully extracted the part holding the golden fluid. Putting this part away in another pocket thoughtfully, he stood up again and tried to see what Xan was doing. Unfortunately, she was being guided very accurately by the radiation detector, which was, apparently, still functional.

"Hey, um, Alex-"

"Xan!"

"Sorry, er, I think I found something over... over _here_."

"I think I found something too."

"Probably not as... interesting as what I found here, though," called John Smith desperately. "This is really, really, um, exciting. And... scientific?" He rushed through the debris. A thin stream of dirt trickled rudely onto his head. He brushed it out angrily. "No! Not the hair! I like the hair! Stoppit!" Smith shook his head vigorously and plunged onward. Then he looked up, horrified, as Xan approached a suspiciously blackened door. It had once stood on hinges but was now simply wedged in a hole in the wall. Recognition whipped his features into a gulping, terrified stare. He ran his hands through his hair again, trying to think of something to say that would call her back but his mind had suddenly taken a quick vacation to the Bahamas. Or a similar beach-ly planet. Of which there were many. All of which he wished he was on instead of here. He prepared for the worst.

Xan looked back at the tall figure leaning into the room. Without meaning to, she caught his eye. Some instinct that went beyond body language or mirror neurons told her not to touch the door for any reason, not to go near it, not to ever, ever think of what might lie behind it, to run and run and _never_, _ever_ go near this man and this door _ever_ again...

From the point of view of John Smith, it was like she had turned and seen something he never wanted anyone to see, much more important than what lay beyond the door, much more secret than the traitorous pair of organs thumping inside his chest.

Then something released him and his mind returned sheepishly, with sunscreen on its nose and a luau around its neck. _Sorry about that_, it said, metaphorically. Relieved, Smith collected his thoughts. Then he turned around very quickly, as if expecting to see a set of very sharp teeth and glowing eyes.

"What?" he said. "There isn't anything behind me, is there?"

The feeling melted. Xan relaxed her face into an expression of mere exasperation. "Afraid, are you?" she said complacently. Then she turned around and kicked in the door.

A cloud of dust flew up dramatically but, anticlimactically, also into Xan's eyes. She coughed and wiped her face. When it all settled, she stepped through the hole. It wasn't much of a room. Sunlight _didn't_ slant down through the haze to illuminate some special object. It was as cluttered and messy as the rest of the wreck, not some kind of oasis. Besides, it was cloudy outside. And why should it be free of mess? It was the epicenter of a meteor strike. It was funny, though, because there was a noticeable absence of lumpy grey space rocks and space dust. Just more wood and dirt. And a half-buried, closet-sized, blue wooden box.

"That's _not_ a meteorite," said Xan, as if the world had disappointed her somehow. "Just some old..." she looked at the writing and brushed soot off of a white sign that proclaimed: "...police public call box? Like a telephone booth, or something? Or those 911 boxes that used to be on lampposts?" She was only mentioning the thing at all because it was sitting in a wide circle of cracked floorboards. Xan lifted her head and saw, plain as day, the shaft of clear air that lead to the sky. "_This_ is what fell?" Xan stepped back and laughed. She kept her hand on the box and walked around it, looking at the floor. "Someone been launching these things from a cannon for fun? This is ridiculous."

"Well, that's not very interesting," said Smith, standing behind Xan and peering at the box. Then he made the mistake of touching it, as if disdainfully.

"Did you feel that?" whispered Xan, her voice suddenly hushed.

"N- no. Nooo, nothing..."

"It... moved."

"No it didn't," he said quickly.

"I felt it."

"I didn't."

"I think there's something _inside_ it."

"Why would there be anything inside it?"

"It _is_ a _box_. What do police boxes usually have inside them? Phones?"

"Er, no, actually. Usually they had operators, the phone was outside of the..."

"You didn't feel that?"

"Nope. Nothing." Smith removed his hand hurriedly and put both hands behind his back. "_Bad box_," he muttered under his breath. Xan moved closer and put her forehead on the dark blue wood. She shut her eyes.

"It's like... a humming. It's warm, too." She leaned against it, meditatively.

"An earthquake!" said John loudly. "Maybe an earthquake! We should get out! Or.. a subway! Of course, it's a subway!" He muttered, "_Stop that, you silly thing._"

"Subway doesn't go under here," Xan said, absently. Her eyes were still shut.

"You're weird," said John. "It's just a box. Probably someone... left it there?"

"Shush."

"No, I will not shush. This is really silly."

"Shhh..."

"Fine."

"Does it open?" said Xan, after a long moment. John Smith cleared his throat.

"Yes?" Xan responded. She seemed to fully realize his presence, and went over the conversation in her head. Her eyes narrowed.

"You were trying to distract me from this box before," she said thoughtfully, almost neutrally. Nothing betrayed any negative emotion, but... still... It was not quite a statement, but nothing near a question. John Smith, without showing it on his face, led the automobile of his thoughts into a bootleg spin and into high reverse. He slowly adopted an expression of concern as his mind raced.

"I said I passed out before, right? I was looking through this wreck and tried to get out and then suddenly it was like, hey, who turned off the lights." He smiled a bit, as if at an inside joke. Then he looked back at Xan with the utmost sincerity. "I saw something. In here. Just a little movement, like something climbing away." Worry creased his face.

"Like something... hatched out. Like whatever was in here is gone already," said Xan, thinking hard. She raised an eyebrow. "You'd just been in an accident, though. If you were in court, I'd seriously question your testimony."

"Oh, come on."

"And speaking of which, shouldn't you get to a hospital? You were out here for... how long? With a possible concussion? I'm no doctor... yet... but it sounds like you could have internal damage, maybe blood clotting. And you need to be de-irradiated."

"I'm fine. And I _am_ a Doctor, so I say, no concussion. And the radiation is _not_ a problem, either. But I rest my case. I think this place is dangerous." He stood up. "Come on, let's go."

Xan shook her head and continued to examine the box. John Smith stood over her with an agonized expression.

"Here's a door," Xan said, and pulled at the handle. It rattled. "Of course, it's locked. Damn. Okay."

"'Okay' meaning, 'we're leaving?'"

"Wimp. No."

"Not a wimp. Yes!"

"Ever heard of lock picks?" Xan fished in a pocket and pulled out a paper clip. She bent it carefully and inserted it in the keyhole.

"That might not work," pointed out Smith, as she tried to maneuver the metal to find pins.

"Yes, because I don't know how to pick a lock," said Xan hopelessly. She threw the paperclip on the ground and sighed. Her hand extended towards the door. "I can feel it. It's so... strange. I think it's a machine, and if I'm not wrong, I think it's still on." She was staring at the lock, so she didn't notice the light on top of the box. It was like a siren light, and it was slowly beginning to glow. John Smith panicked. "_No!_" he hissed. "_What d'you think you're doing? Stop that!_" The light glowed brighter and brighter. He reached desperately in his coat pocket and began to withdraw his grey device. Xan, somehow, didn't see it, nor hear Smith's frantic words. Her fingers were just tiny movements away from touching the handle.

An enormous thunderclap shook the building, a massive crashing explosion that made Xan's stomach leap for cover. Smith shoved the tool back into his shirt. Xan slapped her hands over her ears as the rumble died away. She sat back, heart racing, eardrums hurting tremendously.

"I think you were right about the rain. Or snow. Have you ever heard of thunderstorms in the winter?" asked John, helping the girl to her feet. Relief was quickly replacing surprise.

"Thunder-snow," she said, matter-of-factly. "Kind of rare, but, you know, it's been a somewhat warm winter. Climate change and all. And, okay, yes, we can leave. I might be a little reckless, but I know it isn't a good idea to stay here in a giant winter storm."

"Thunder-snow? Never heard of it," lied the man. "You sure we should leave? You were pretty close to finding something."

"Reverse psychology?"

"Only a little," he protested.

"We're leaving," said Xan.

"Good. This place is creepy." The man looked back at the blue box as they left, giving it an accusing stare. "_Are you mad?_" whispered the Doctor, so quietly it could have been only a particularly vehement thought."_What was that all about? I must have crashed you harder than I thought!_"


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: So now we're past what's happened in the preview! This is all new, never-before-seen, original story.**

"So, you're sure about not going to a hospital?" inquired Xan as she pulled her hood up. The winter wind pushed it back down in defiance.

"Oh, hospitals give me the willies. I'm not the hospital type."

"But you're a doctor!" Xan realized, once out in the open, that the man really _didn't_ look like he'd been in an accident. True, his clothes were a little crumpled. He had a cut on his finger... no, he didn't. Or, at least it wasn't recent... more like a red line than a... no. There hadn't been a cut. It was just a trick of the light... Like the bruise. It had looked like there'd been a bruise on his head before, but it wasn't there now. In fact, his skin had a remarkably healthy glow.

"So? I'm more of the traveling... house-call... type."

"Where's your car?"

"What?" It was getting hard to hear. The bare trees along the road shivered, and the cracked pavement was unleashing waves of frozen dust that had settled comfortably for the winter before being rudely awakened.

"Your _car_?"

"Crashed."

"So, where is it, then?"

"I don't remember, somewhere around here. Not like I could get it going or anything. I'll take the bus."

Xan, who was feeling very chilly in her thin sweater, nodded. "Same." After a few minutes, the bus shelter appeared. Xan was bizarrely relieved. Once inside the relative calm of the shelter she turned to her companion.

"I thought it'd be gone," she said, grinning. "I don't know why, but I felt like we'd just keep walking and there'd only be... winter. Just the cold." Xan rose from the bench and looked out. The factory had been on a bluff overlooking London. In summer, there might have been a field of grass and wildflowers. It was just dirt and dry stalks all the way to the edge now. She could just make out the city's lights.

"You must think I'm weird," she mumbled, suddenly glum and resigned. Her smile faded as she stared out, and thought about the city that she once knew, but couldn't remember. She returned to the shelter and sat in an island, staring at nothing, thinking about caves that sang, and dinosaurs, and then... mirrors. How could you reach reflections? Xan paid no attention to the man next to her, as if she had never met him. He said nothing, but tapped his foot and occasionally shivered. Then he seemed to notice her quiet.

"Xan?"

"Mm?"

"Nothing." He looked in the distance facing slightly away from the girl, just like two strangers in a bus shelter.

"What were you looking for with the radiation, anyway? Some sort of study, no?" he finally asked after a while. The wind blew in response.

"I found it in bodies, artifacts, all over history." said Xan tiredly. She huddled to keep warm.

"And...?"

"Oh, it's just that tau waves are modern, not that they're rare. And they're harmless. Those artifacts were probably contaminated."

The man sitting next to Xan seemed to be absorbing her quietness. He slumped in the seat and shrugged. Then he sat up, annoyed and surprised. Xan had turned into a completely different person, and it seemed to be contagious.

"Are you all right?" John Smith sounded worried.

"Fine."

This was not very encouraging. Smith took a little device from his coat and pointed it at Xan. It made a little bleeping noise as it scanned her.

"What are you doing?" Xan suddenly jerked from her reverie. "Okay, what is that?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing," responded Smith very innocently. He stowed it away again, and studied her out of the corner of his eye, muttering something that sounded like, "_Can't be too careful this time of year._"

"If you really want to know, I found tau radiation in corpses from Pompeii," said Xan, turning back to face Smith. This news seemed to surprise but not astound the man.

"Well. That's... that's clever. How'd you find it? It manifests in DNA, and there can't be much DNA left after all that time."

"Enough to reconstruct." Xan considered. "You know about all this? How?"

"I'm a sort of... doctor of everything."

"Funny way to put it. Anyway, only a few chromosomes were intact for each sample, but find a lot of cells from the same person and you'll get a bigger picture. The DNA's the same, because, you know, same person."

"Pretty smart," remarked John Smith, impressed.

"And not only there," continued Xan, warming up to the conversation. "I found it in the strangest places."

"You don't say," said Smith absently, rubbing an earlobe.

"There was this man who said something happened to him during the London Blitz."

"How unusual."

"And a dresser or wardrobe that came from pre-revolutionary France. In _the_ royal palace."

"Where in the palace?"

"A bedroom. By a fireplace. Apparently the room belonged to Madame de Pompadour."

"Ah, right. Nice lady. Very clever. You know, in some ways you... almost remind me of her..."

"There!"

"The bus?"

"No, the unexpected thing I was waiting for you to say!"

"...and in other ways you are _completely_ unalike."

"Did you _know_ her?"

"I've read some of the thing's she's written," John Smith told Xan, quite truthfully. He looked ashamed.

"And you're covered in it," Xan went on. "And so was..."

"Hang on. I missed something. Covered in what? Oh, right, tau radiation. Never mind, go on."

"So was that box. More than any of the samples I saw. Much more than you, and you had more on you than..." Xan thought. "A simile occurs to me, but I think I'll not torture you with figurative language. But my point is that it was on some other scale. Like it was... made of the stuff, or someth..." Xan seemed to realize something very, very quickly. She plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out the circle.

"It was... that was _it_! _That_ was _it_! That was the-" A thunderclap cut off her words. Smith looked at the sky and back at Xan. She was pointing the detector at her right hand.

"What?"

"Okay, listen, all of the human DNA manifestations I've been finding were in the skin, which made me think that it didn't come from ambient exposure, which is what we receive all the time from being around recent technology. Because it was only in the _skin_, you see," Xan burst out, eyes alight. "So what I figured was, it had to be from _touching_ something, some highly irradiated object, a device or machine or anomaly that gives off huge amounts of tau waves."

John Smith realized something important about Xan. She was very smart. This made her dangerous.

"And _that was it_! The object I was looking for! My hand's coated in radiation, and I _touched_ the box! So that thing's been to France, and Italy, and London, right here, and it's been to Alberta, for god's sake, to _prehistoric_ _Canada_ - I found dinosaur bones there that had the radiation - and that was _aeons_ ago..." She leapt to her feet, and Smith frantically followed suit.

"Wait. Wait. Before you go running off to reinvestigate that thing, you might want to stop a moment. I think I can see a bus."

Xan peered down the long way. Curving around the hill, yes, it was light moving up the road. She sat back down.

"You probably think I'm crazy," she repeated, with a trace of bitterness, as the man next to her breathed out in relief.

"Nah. Stranger things have happened this time of year. I would know." He grinned. "Seen 'em all."

"Really?"

"Most of them." _And the ones I haven't, I will see, soon enough._

"Do you remember the... giant ship over London, by any chance?"

"Which one?"

"With the... uh... Santa drones?"

"Which ones?"

"Oh. There were _more_? The things that happen around here, it's crazy..."

"D'you mean the very, very, very first time?" asked Smith.

"People on roofs!" remembered Xan, triumphant. "No one I knew, but, still."

"Good old days, eh?" said John nostalgically. "Wait. _No one_ you knew? No one?"

"You know, it's funny, because I sort of remember it, but then I also sort of don't. I don't remember hearing about it in newspapers. Or watching it happen. I just know it did."

"Is your blood type A positive, by any chance? Because that might explain it..."

"Um. No. O positive. Irrelevant...? Anyway. I mean, even in New York, it had to be a big deal. 'Aliens' and everything."

"You from New York? New York _City?_"

"Yeah. You've been there?" That sad look again. Mirrors, thought Xan. I can't remember. How could you find your way through all the years?

"To several versions. Great place."

"Bus."

"Oh, that's not mine. See you around, then."

"Yeah, bye."

"Wait."

Xan pivoted. The bus rattled up the road.

"Do you know what this is?" Smith pulled the container out of his pocket and held it up to the stormy light.

"Yes. I do. It's a fuel cell."

"Fuel cell?"

"Waterhelm biofuel. And... is there some still in it?" Her tone was incredulous.

"What's Waterhelm?"

"An energy company. Could I have a look at that?"

"Sure." He handed it to her. Xan stared at it, turning it over and over.

"How did you get the chamber out of the main cell? They're locked up tight."

"The, uh, main cell was broken. I found it in the factory."

"No one knows what the fuel's made of. It's some kind of company secret. Oh. This _is_ my bus." Wheels screeched to a stop and the doors opened, hissing. Xan reached in her pocket and removed a fare-card. She handed the cell to John Smith, who took it and examined it very suspiciously. He came to a decision.

"I think this one goes by my place," said the man, and swung himself into the bus behind Xan. He showed the driver something in a black wallet in lieu of a ticket or money. Xan couldn't quite catch what was on it. John followed Xan to a seat, and sat down next to her, ducking a bit since the luggage hold was far below head height for him. The bus vibrated as the engine started. Again Xan noticed how casually the man adjusted his body to an area. He leaned back on the chair, fiddling with the reading light aimlessly, the tip of his tongue touching the roof of his mouth. He pulled out a device which he flashed quickly through the air. It beeped. He put it away.

"I haven't had a good experience with busses lately," he said, grinning.

"Um?"

"Just checking."

"You just did it again." Xan looked out the window at the passing trees, at the grey sky. It was midday, but it looked like dusk.

"What did I do?"

"Something unexpected."

"If you mention it every time I do something unexpected, you'll get very bored very quickly."

"That's what I thought. And I count following me on the bus as unexpected as well."

"I suppose you like _expectable_ men," he said scornfully. "People who do _ordinary_ things."

"Not... particularly..." Xan waited, trying to decide on the right move. Taken individually, each of the man's actions would have definitely made her want to get up and climb the heck out of this seat. Quickly. But together... he was certainly unpredictable, but some people were like that. And Xan was a good judge of people, because she was so reserved in judgment. She looked at John Smith and saw someone who wouldn't mind talking to a stranger about science. She saw a friendly person, not an immodest one. She realized that even if she hadn't basically rescued him from a meteor crash site, he still would have trusted her. So she trusted him.

He was the kind of person who you'd like to see on the subway. _He'd_ tell people about singing caves, or fossils. Make people wish they'd been scientists instead of car salesmen or clerks chained to cubicles. Contact. It took so little, but meant so much. Xan realized that she was, for possibly the first time since she left home, seeing a person instead of a reflection. So she thought all this, and she had the feeling that the man heard it, too.

Of course, that was only the outside of the inside of what Xan saw. She still wasn't sure that she could look directly in his eyes. _Never, ever think about what's behind. Just run and run and never, _ever_, go near it again._

Why not?

Because I'm changing. Because something's happening to me. To the world. And I'd be an idiot to pretend it isn't real.

_I saw something last night._ The thought struck Xan with a blow like a hammer. You hide things behind doors, behind mirrors, so that you won't see them, crumpled, like in sodden tissue folds. _But_ _I know that I saw something. Something's coming. Something's already here. And it's as though the air is twisting up, trying to get away. Not the air. What is it?_

"So, about that fuel cell."

Xan, who had been staring at the soft fuzz of the seat in front of her, felt that she had not been very communicative, so began to speak more clearly and quickly. "Waterhelm makes them. The company started in... two thousand and nine, or ten, I think, but they were only a small group. Now they practically run the city."

"And the city runs on this."

"Right. For some reason they found an energy source that has a massive output. I mean, if it weren't for quantum computing and shuttle missions, one fuel cell could power a small city."

"No!"

"Oh, yes. One can certainly power a rocket. Now, of course, this waste cell is only one part of a large fuel cell. The full-size ones are about the size of a dresser. But still, compare that to a whole power plant. Or two or three."

John Smith took that in. It was a very appealing idea. So, of course, there had to be a... "So... what's the catch? It's got to be _massive_.""

"I don't know yet."

"_You_ don't know yet? You, specifically?"

"I don't know of anyone else who's trying to find out." The bus, John Smith realized, was traveling a lot faster than he remembered busses doing. He realized that there was a very important question he'd forgotten to ask. He carefully phrased the query.

"This company's been around for a long time, about...?"

"Twelve years. Almost to the day, really, because the company was created right around Christmas." _2021. Got it. And Christmastime. Again. Of course._

"I suppose this bus runs on the fuel?"

"It might." The man opened his hand. On his palm lay the waste cell.

"So, this much fluid would be enough to..."

"I'm not an expert. No one really knows how long the fuel lasts. We just throw away the waste cells and by then they're empty." She paused. "That much fluid could probably run a refrigerator for a few years. Or a light bulb for twenty. I don't really know." She put out her hand for it.

"_This_ much?"

"Which is why I've been trying to find an unused sample for a long time. I don't even know the barest beginnings about its composition. They call it a biofuel, but all that power makes it seem like fission, or maybe even fusion. Can I see it?"

"All right, why?" Smith passed the part to Xan, who took out a touchphone. She scrolled through its applications. One was called "Magnifying Glass."

"Look at this. Power cells generally say how much energy they store. Or they should." On the screen of the Smartphone, a number and two letters could be seen, along with a highly magnified version of the cell and Xan's palm. "1 TW. One terawatt."

"If it's full?"

"How could you _store_ that much power in this _tiny_ little bit of liquid?"

"Is this _actually_ 2021?"

"I know, right. Incredible."

"No, really. _Is_ it?"

"When else?"

"You'd be surprised," Smith said to himself.

"I've wondered what this fuel was made of for _ages_. Finally, _finally_ I have a sample. I've been looking _forever_ for... erm. Ah." She relinquished the piece.

"Well, I'll take a look at this, for sure."

Xan looked at her feet. Modesty and good manners fought an apocalyptic battle with pride. She put her phone away and looked back out the window, then at John Smith. He seemed to be experiencing the same moral dilemma.

"My stop's coming up soon," Xan told him. He courteously stood and left his seat so she could exit. The bus zipped through the icy streets, past skyscrapers. Xan turned.

"I'm a geneticist, you know."

"I thought you were an... _archeologist_."

"I work in paleogenetics. Lots of analyzing."

"Well, I think I might have a _little_ more experience in this area than-"

"You think so?"

Smith looked out the window, feigning contemplation. He nodded sarcastically. "Yup..." He pursed his lips. "Think so." Xan made an exasperated noise. Smith began to put the waste cell away. "I would really suggest that I keep this. No, _really_."

"This is my _job_..."

John Smith rolled his eyes. "You have _never_ even _known_ the _meaning _of the word _job_..."

"...'s what I _do_..."

"Me too, 'cept I've done it longer."

"There's _tons_ of equipment in my lab, and at my house, and I'm _sorry_, but you're not following me _there_, too..."

"Well, miss clever, _I_ happen to have a... happen to have..." The sentence trailed off. His expression, one of triumphant superiority, didn't change. It merely became... fixed. He kept staring at Xan. She waited. "Ah," he said slowly. He seemed to think. "Right, then. Well. Hm."

"Yes?"

He fished in his pocket and tactfully handed over the cell.

"I may be experiencing some... technical difficulties at present."

"Thank you." Xan looked happily at the cell and its contents. The bus slowed.

"Maybe I'll find another... later... oh well..."

"Bye." The doors opened, and in seconds, John Smith was standing alone in the middle of the aisle. Xan had practically fled, feasting her eyes on the cell like a small child with a piece of candy. Absent-mindedly, the man followed her path with his gaze from the bus stop while the engine hummed back to life. Maybe he should look around the rest of the city. There were always places to eat, even in 2021, and he was famished. Took a lot out of you, regenerating. Although, there was still that mystery. He felt fine. He certainly wasn't dying. So he must have healed. The Doctor dropped back into a chair as the bus began to move. _So far,_ _this has been one of the most uneventful Christmases of all time. For me, anyway. _He watched Xan. A few seconds later, the traffic had hidden her. He grinned, and turned amiably to the passenger behind him.

"I rather think she likes me," he told the bemused woman, with a sunny smile. Then he twisted away and settled in the chair. "Does this seat go back?" he asked, suddenly reappearing. "Is it reclining?" He fiddled with a knob. "Do you mind?" He pushed the seat back and relaxed theatrically.

"You're getting your hopes up a bit early," came a droll voice behind him.

"What?"

"I know that girl you were with. I work in the same lab as her. She's a loner." The woman's tone was prophetic.

"Who, Xan?" the Doctor asked cheerfully. "Isn't she nice?"

"Erm."

"A bit bossy. Not really a people person. And... intense. Big on her work."

"She... yes. She _likes_ _science_."

"I noticed."

"She spends her holiday break at the laboratory," wafted the baleful voice of the woman sitting behind the Doctor. "_Voluntarily_. The rest of us have to submit papers, have to finish work. Who would want to work over Christmas? She does. Crazy." The woman paused and added, as an afterthought, "Maybe she doesn't have anything to do. Maybe she doesn't have anyone to be with."

The Doctor turned around, and looked at Xan's colleague seriously for the first time. "She seemed... normal." He appeared to be thinking hard, without actually knowing what it was he was thinking about. An invisible pull forward announced that the bus was slowing again.

"She can act normal, but you know, I reckon she learned how to be like that from books. She reads a lot. She sounds just like a book sometimes." The woman sat back and picked up her own hardcover. The title on it was _Santa's a Robot? The Truth Behind Christmas_. She settled back and turned a page. She read a few lines. Slowly her gaze lifted to the seat in front of her, then back to the book. She peered around the side of the chair. Which was empty.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Here, the two characters independently muse over their encounters in their own ways.**

* * *

><p>Avalon University<p>

December 22nd, 2021

Misshapen snowflakes fell on the marble steps, melting upon contact. Wind swirled through gold banisters and made its way to the street, where sleek cars whispered by. Only city busses still rattled along, engines humming, as old cars used to do. Xan sat on the steps outside Avalon University leaning against a cold stone pillar, watching the traffic. Air seemed to crystallize around her, only to be scattered by the wind. Cold nipped at her nose and pinched her ears with tiny, thread-thin fingers. She didn't move, but simply endured it, as though if she were patient enough, the days would lengthen, the Earth would turn, and the stars would thaw her frozen body. She felt so tired, and part of her wished that she could just sit until spring came.

Yet, somewhere, there was a spark of feeling that cut through the cold. Xan felt that if she walked inside, into the warmth created by lifeless engines, it might disappear. The feeling was not a good one. It squeezed at her heart and painted trails of acid inside her chest. It twisted her stomach like a roller coaster that has gone on too long, and the adrenaline has worn off, leaving simple, undiluted fear. Xan did not, therefore, recognize the feeling. She was out in the cold to study it. It worried her, because unpleasant though it was, it was strangely addictive. No, not exactly addictive. More... compulsive. But it also felt like a warning. All pain, Xan knew, is simply a biological reflex developed out of a need for incentives. A creature will not know that scratching an itch until it bleeds is a necessarily bad thing, unless the act is accompanied by pain. It will not search for food unless it is to curb the raw hunger in its gut. Pain tells us that there is something amiss, something that must be corrected, a breach in homeostasis.

Emotional pain, she knew, came from chemical imbalances in the brain. The brain, being a complex organ and the only one in the human body that is self-aware, naturally can make mistakes. Emotional pain could be created for absolutely no reason at all. This was, in fact, often the case. Or, at least, there was no good reason _she_ could see.

Xan realized, with a shock, that she was frozen. Or, she realized, she _could_ move, but her mind wouldn't let her try. It was like half waking up in the middle of the night, and feeling currents of static overwhelm the limbs. When semiconscious, trying to move is very much like reconnecting a power cord. Painful. But not ever like this. Xan had a brief spasm of panic. _I can't move! Let me go! Help!_

The paralysis shattered. The return of feeling to her body's nerves was so sudden that Xan gasped for air, which unfortunately turned into a hiccup. She got to her feet and rushed inside the building, wanting to get away from the pressure building up inside her. A fleck of pink floated down from behind her, breaking into frenzied dance as the December wind caught it. Her hand lifted slowly, then whispered silently though the air like the vehicles whizzing down the wide streets. It materialized around the object that was flying erratically on frigid currents. Xan backed into the insulated building, pushing the glass door open with her shoulders and sliding cautiously inside. She opened her hand, expecting to see a gum wrapper or other piece of plastic.

In her palm was a cherry blossom. It was clean, but one petal was torn. Where the stem opened into a bowl to hold the flower was green and fresh. It gave off a faint scent, and thin, delicate stamens were tipped with specks of white pollen. Xan admired the flower for a few moments, then placed it by a spiky, lush plant grown in the dependable heat of the atrium.

Flashing her I.D. to a computer screen, Xan ascended a flight of stairs in the atrium resembling a grand staircase. It led to a walkway that passed over the atrium, and pointed in two directions. One, an empty corridor, led to classrooms, the other to labs. That hallway, which Xan headed through, was also not very full. It was holiday break, and many of her fellow scientists had left already for warmer or more familiar places. Tomorrow, they should all be gone, save for those with a study due in the first few weeks of the new year, and Xan, who spent the holidays working because she felt more comfortable. It was what she would do in her spare time, anyway. That and reading, or exercising. Xan did for leisure what many other people did only if told to. Not just because she saw the value of a healthy lifestyle. It was more that those activities had results. Reading or working led to increased knowledge. Exercise made you more fit. Even if Xan performed her daily activities, her routine without any special attention to bettering herself, she would always be improving. And they left her time to think. They encouraged thought. If Xan did not occupy herself, she would probably just sit around all day and think. Modern entertainment did not provide room for unregulated thought. Television, for example, practically eliminated it. Xan was addicted to thinking. She even thought about things in her dreams, or in the middle of ordinary tasks.

For example, while she cleared her desk to set up preliminary experiments on the waste cell's fluid, she thought about the strange day she was having. First, her alarm clock broke, and woke her up in the middle of the night to see a space rock fall from the sky. Then, the space rock had turned out to be a blue telephone booth. A police box. Well, no, it hadn't, but it was there where there should have _been _a space rock, which led to the question, where did the meteorite go? It would have been quite a bit smaller than the box. A meteorite _that_ size would have made a sizeable crater. Maybe the police box had been in the factory for some reason, and the meteorite had fallen next to it, and then the box had fallen into the hole it left. So the thing to do would be to get the box out of the way. Maybe what she was looking for was underneath. She'd been joking about it being a machine, right? Just to scare that guy she met. Or something like that. He'd been acting as though there was some terrifying monster inside. Except that could have been an act, too, because it was a little overdone. Had _he_ been trying to scare _her_ off? Xan placed the cell on the table and took a scientific syringe from the drawer. She pulled on gloves and pressed on what looked like a cap for the part, which was about the size of a USB drive. As she extracted a bit of liquid, she wondered why she had added that last word. Scare her _off_? Hadn't she meant "scare her," as in to intentionally cause uneasiness usually characteristic of a perception of danger, in this case in order to witness a humorous reaction? She'd meant that, right?

The liquid, as she had previously noticed, was golden in color. It was close to odorless, and had very low viscosity, probably lower than water, which was relatively rare. It stuck together, though, exhibiting cohesive properties similar to mercury. It was actually quite like mercury, but it was not quicksilver but quick-gold. Actually, it was a little lighter than gold. And it had, if she wasn't imagining it, tiny bubbles. Xan took the sample and placed a single droplet onto a slide, carefully dropping a coverslip over it. She turned on her microscope and stared through it. The liquid was smooth, but the color variegated. She zoomed closer and readjusted the focus. The high magnification brought even stranger sights, She saw what looked like thin, short hairs twisting inside. They moved independently with apparent cognizance, for the ends of the strings would curl around other strings and the strings would... what? It looked like they... On a hunch, Xan turned the light to the microscope off, which usually meant that it would be impossible to see the slide unless the sample was... Yes. The hairs were glowing softly. As they connected to their neighbors, they gave off a faint golden glow, then disintegrated. New hairs formed out of the stew. Xan thought hard about this. Light being naturally emitted. There could be a number of explanations. One would be that the liquid was reacting with the air, and spontaneously combusting. Another explanation was bioluminescent bacteria - the hairs looked almost alive - and, after all, the stuff was a biofuel. There was also the possibility of radiation being emitted that caused a glow. But then, why would new hairs be forming? What make the fuel so powerful? Was it this strange, microcosmic congress?

Xan turned the light back on and raised the setting even higher. What she saw was even more gold - odd, because at this magnification, which was being created electronically, most organic substances had no color. Leaves were green because of chloroplasts. You could see the little green balls on a low magnification. But this was still all colored. She watched as a hair, now looking more like a thread of yarn, began to coalesce. Xan realized what the process reminded her of. When a cell splits, the genetic material comes together from an invisible mess of chromatin to form distinct chromosomes. The hairs in the sample formed in a similar way to what was observed in early prophase of mitosis. So were the hairs, in fact, organic material? Were they genetic material?

Xan switched off the microscope and removed the liquid from under the slide. The amount of liquid left in the cell was not much reduced, but she could not afford to waste any. She placed a few drops into a thin test tube and placed the test tube, along with another filled with water to balance it, into a high-speed centrifuge, which she plugged in and switched on. It buzzed as the tubes spun around, blurred.

As she waited, she looked at the computer which was hooked up to the microscope and replayed the video it took. The hairs were knotted and twisted, like rope, or maybe a cylindrical, honey-colored brain... wait a minute! Xan watched in slow motion as the hairs connected. Tiny golden sparks seemed to fly along the length of the hairs, originating from the point where the hairs... _dendrites?_... interlaced. Then, a backlash seemed to take place, like a counterstrike in lightning. And, like in lightning, it was much more powerful. The whole hair lit up, and emitted sparks in every direction, and then it flew apart. The sparks floated away, only to reform into many new hairs. Were the things... replicating? And the process of replication, or whatever it was, seemed to release a lot of energy, so maybe that had something to do with the power output of the cell.

Xan realized that the centrifuge had stopped, so she turned to it and took out the test tube. Which turned out to be the one with water in it. Xan put that one down by the sink and removed the _other_ test tube. As she had hoped, the material had separated. The more solid part - the strings - had settled out. The top of the liquid, now a pale mango color, foamed pink. The strings were a dark, reddish gold. Nothing appeared to be happening. _No doubt the strings and liquid are at some kind of complicated equilibrium_, Xan thought. She raised the tube to eye level and stared at it, peering at the strange substance. _All right, now for some chemical analysis_, she decided, and turned to another apparatus by the centrifuge.

The lights of the room dimmed.

_Power short?_ thought Xan, confused. A mechanical female voice spoke. "_Sixteen fifty. Closing in -_ten-_ minutes. Please clean all equipment before storage. -_Ten-_ minutes to closing._"

"_What_? But it's not... er... that'd be... four fifty, it's, it's..." Xan shoved her wrist into the light. The watch proclaimed it to be twelve forty-two. "It's midday!" She strode to the window.

_I can't believe it_, Xan thought. _It's getting dark. Advesperascit. _The Latin had jumped to the front of her mind, as it sometimes did. Sure enough, the sun was red and low, about to disappear behind a building.

Maybe her watch was broken. All her other timepieces seemed to have the mechanical flu. But hadn't it _just_ been noon? Hadn't she sat outside the building maybe half an hour ago? She began to clear her desk, placing the cell and the test tube in her locker, which she shut. The numbers reset, locking the door. Xan reached for her coat. Turning off the lights, she closed the door to the lab and walked down the hallway. But, then again, she seemed to remember late afternoon light as well. Had she fallen asleep? Had she spent more time with that John Smith person than she realized? Probably. But she hardly felt tired, now. She felt like she had woken up six or seven hours ago, actually.

She trotted down the tall stairs and met a security guard who was closing other lab doors.

"Excuse me?" Xan asked, with some discomfort, as usually accompanies talking to strangers. Except, funnily enough, certain particular strangers who are always doing unexpected things.

"Yes? You have a problem?"

"Can you check entry records for the halls and exits, please?"

The man obligingly pulled out a handheld security monitor. "What are you looking for?"

"When did I enter the building last?" she asked intently. "Last name Russell, first name Alexandra."

"Hmm... looks like you came in around twelve oh six. Why do you..."

"Entry records for this wing," she added quickly.

"One entry into lab 334 at sixteen twenty-one. You think someone stole your I.D., miss?"

"No. No. I just... Have you ever heard of someone falling asleep while walking to a room?"

"If they're tired enough, maybe. Or coming from a party." He shrugged, thinking that was very amusing.

"For four hours?"

"Why not?"

"Without noticing? They don't perceive it at all?"

"Wouldn't you notice if you fell asleep?"

"Right. Exactly what I was thinking." Xan shuddered. Silent as a shadow, the feeling was returning. The acid in her chest, the squeezing pressure on her heart; all were coming back. But they were only echoes. Memories. She pulled on her coat.

"Do you happen to know what kind of trees are planted outside?" Xan found her mouth saying, without meaning to. It had just crossed her mind, and somehow some out as speech.

"Huh?"

"The trees outside? What kinds of trees are they? What species?"

"I think some are plane trees, and there are some cherry blossoms, and a bunch of maples."

"Cherry blossoms?"

"Haven't you seen them flowers in the springtime?"

Xan nodded and thanked the man. As she walked away, she reflected, _I've seen them in the wintertime, too._

* * *

><p>Inside a Dimensionally Transcendent Temporal Vehicle<p>

December 22nd, 2021

Far away, the blue box waited peacefully. It had existed for a long time, and had seen many spectacular, fantastic sights. It had endured the harshest colds of space and the heat of suns. And it was the only one of its kind. The last in the universe. But it was never alone. It had a friend. It had a _companion_. Someone to take care of its dead, metal parts while the living, growing parts... lived. And that friend had many other friends, most of whom had taken for granted what the creature was. The ones it chose to look more closely at were the ones who looked back. And they were always the special friends. There had been one, once. And soon there would be another.

It knew this, because it knew everything. Its friend claimed to see all of space and time, but the being knew it was just talk. Its friend came from a race of people who used others of the being's own kind as... steeds. As laborers. Some, like the creature's friend, saw them for what they were. But many of the silly, pompous, short-lived riders believed themselves to be the most powerful beings in the universe. And the funny part was, many of the friends of the friend came from a race of sillier, far shorter-lived beings who also believed they were the most powerful beings in the universe.

Someday, the creature thought (although to call what it did 'thought' would be like calling a symphony 'a bunch of notes strung together'), I will meet a being who lives longer than me and knows more than me, though I am all knowing (in a sense), and I will laugh at them, because I know that there will always be beings longer-lived, more all-knowing. It will probably laugh with me, though, because it will know this because it knows all that I know. They are all misguided. I am, too, and though I know it, it changes nothing. But that is not a bad thing. Life is special because it can do that. Life is life because dead things had the audacity to live.

In some ways, the beautifully conducted, harmonious, electrical fantasia that was the creature's thoughts might have had a similar tune to Xan Russell's. The two thought very much alike.

Inside the creature, its friend was going to help fix it. He had damaged it in the crash, but it did not blame him. It did, however, find it satisfying to enact small, strictly friendly vengeance upon him.

"Will you _stop_ _that_? I know you're doing this on purpose, and that's not fair! You outdated, misfiring, malfunctioning box!"

The creature was not sorry, but it knew the Time Lord did not mean it.

"Turn the hot water on again! That was very rude! I smell of radiation and my head really hurts and I want to take a shower, now _please_, bring the hot water back!"

The creature also noticed that its friend was feeling uncomfortable. It decided to return the hot water, but only for ten more minutes of his time. It was very powerful and ancient, but it was also annoyed and wanted to be repaired as soon as possible, although time is simply subjective, of course.

"I'm sorry I called you a box," said its friend, patting the walls. He was sitting in the shower, holding his head in his hands. The shower did not look like common Earth showers. In accordance with the creature's current fancy, it presented itself along the themes of organic and sub-aquatic. The creature's friend looked up, although not at anything in particular. Technically, anywhere it looked would be at what he was addressing. "Why did you act that way around the girl? What's _she_ so special for?"

The creature knew that soon, its friend would find out. It thought the friend might just be jealous.

"Not that you could actually respond. Except maybe by turning off my hot water. I must be going crazy. Talking to my own ship."

Even dead ships have souls. People give them souls. The creature just happened to be a living ship. Talking to the creature was perfectly acceptable. And it _could_ hear everything he was saying.

"You don't respond, but you can listen, I suppose. So listen up. You nearly exposed me to that girl, which is very dangerous. How do we know that she doesn't work for some group like UNIT? I don't want _them_ getting inside my TARDIS. You, that is."

The creature was meaningfully silent, as opposed to the not-so-quiet silence before. To its friend, it sounded like all functions stopped at once. Including the shower. He swore under his breath and pulled a towel from a rack nearby. But instead of drying himself, he lay on the floor with the towel wrapped around himself.

The creature was very concerned. It wanted him to get up.

The tiles the figure was lying on grew colder and colder. He sat up with a yelp.

"OI! WHY D'YOU KEEP DOING THAT?" He began to dress himself. "Did the ion hammers break again? The particle whirligigs? The nexus navigators? Come on, I _hate_ fixing them!" He pulled on a blue suit and laced his sneakers. Rushing into the console room with his hair still damp, still fiddling with his tie, he looked at the computer screen resting innocuously among thousands of intricate controls. The screen was blank. He tapped the sides of it. "No, no, no, don't _break_ on me!" Still black. He reached inside his shirt pocket and pulled out his grey... pen?... and directed it at the screen. The tip glowed blue and the thing whistled mechanically. Nothing. With an irritated sigh, he began to repair the computer, talking quietly to himself in scientific jargon.

"No, no, not the transfer board... that won't phase correctly... I need a new flux spanner... this... this is broken, how did it break?..." Slowly, lights began to flicker on in the general region of the screen, revealing a panoply of levers, dials, circuits, displays, tubes, buttons, switches, objects that looked like miniature musical instruments, objects that looked like pieces of metal banged together, and a few stray Lego bricks. The round console's sloping surface began to glow a faint blue color, but it faded again.

"What? _What_?"

The door opened. The Doctor stared at it, half expecting to see Xan Russell standing there. He really _wouldn't_ have put it past her. The fact that she could see the TARDIS at all was phenomenally unusual, because he'd checked the perception filter and it was functioning normally (the only part, it seemed, that was). People normally couldn't see the TARDIS at all, except in the corner of their eye. Normally. And that girl had been _very_ curious.

But the other half expected what he actually saw, which was no one. Looking around with a confused expression at the ship, he cautiously walked to the door and stuck his head out. He'd managed to fly the TARDIS the few feet out of the crater it made, and it was now located in the room where he had managed to crawl to when he first woke up. That tiny hop had exhausted its power, but at least it was sitting upright. And it was slowly regrowing broken parts.

Normally, when a door opens of its own accord, the general rule is not to go through it. Well, normally, if you see anything act out of the ordinary, then the rule was to avoid it. The Doctor felt that this really could not apply to him. He pulled his head back inside the police box.

Because the blue box _was_ the spaceship. The shower was inside it, several stories of wardrobe were inside it, the huge brown and orange and blue console room was inside it. The inside of the Doctor's ship was substantially larger than the outside. Looks can be deceiving. Looking at someone, for example, you might think you could judge their age, their species, their gender. The first two conclusions would be wildly inaccurate when it came to the Doctor. The third one, well, call it _provisionally_ true. There was a small possibility it would be temporary. Only a small one, though. It all had to do with genetics.

The Doctor reemerged, wearing a brown leather greatcoat. Very carefully, he stepped out of the TARDIS and looked around him. Nothing seemed out of place. This was not hard to determine, because the room was completely bare, aside for fallen beams, broken glass, and dirt, which was in stark contrast to the mess in the crater. This room must not have been used for anything important, he decided, since it was so empty. But something _felt_ wrong. It was like a smell in the air, or a texture. He looked out of the window frame, whose glass had fallen away in the impact. The dead grass blew in the wind, and flecks of snow were falling. Something felt very, very, very wrong. He watched the sky. Through the haze, a patch of clouds close to the zenith seemed brighter than the rest. The sun. A little before noon. But it had been noon _hours _ago! He had left the bus and gotten something to eat. He'd returned here, and flown the TARDIS out of the hole. He'd taken a shower. It should be late afternoon!

Come to think of it, that sun was unusually high in the sky. It couldn't go that high during winter. The angle was to large. That was a spring sun. A thick snowflake fell gently on his hand, which he'd stuck out the window to catch it.

It wasn't a snowflake. It was a fluffy white seed. Cottony, with tufts of silky hair emerging from a capsule. Characteristic of a kapok tree, _Ceiba_ _pentandra_, commonly found in...

The world turned. If you were a special sort of person who had senses that extended into four or five dimensions, the sort of creature designed to navigate treacherous temporal rifts and travel through the cobwebs of cosmic strings without breaking any, if you were a being whose ecological niche was the past, the present, the future, and what lies beyond, then you would see the little impurities forming. Tiny cracks. Discontinuities. Timelines clumsily spliced together.

Other beings would be able to sense it too, if it wasn't for temporal diffusion. Time readjusts itself so that everything in one three dimensional plane is following the same timeline. But the disturbance can be sensed by beings who are designed (or, more accurately, statistically generated over millions of years of evolution) to travel through time, whether as passengers or as vehicles.

It is important to be able to sense those little changes, in case what you are doing will cause a giant glaring paradox. And since paradoxes usually resolve themselves by folding away the instigator into a disconnected brane, (which tends to result in that being's genetic line being cut off) natural selection favored the beings with this sixth sense.

The world turned. This time, it was turning in a more conventional sense. The sun was low in the sky.

"Oh, not _again_!" the Doctor moaned, throwing his hands in the air in a gesture of cosmic exasperation. "Don't I even get time to shower on this job? Sorry, no, the timeline's unraveling again! So what if you just _died_ to save it, you'd think that'd give you a break, but nope. Not even twenty-six hours. Not even a _day_! Well," he shrugged, "here we go again." But even as he walked back to his ship, resigned, he found that the corners of his mouth were curving up into a secret smile. _Just like old times. Just like the very first time. But now I _know_ who I am. And I like it that way. Who knows what I would have turned into? I could have been... _short_ again. Or old. Or... something not too bad, but I wouldn't be _me_._

A weird thought occurred to him. _What if I'd turned into someone Xan wouldn't have liked?_ He turned the thought over and examined it closely. _Because then, I wouldn't have learned about this energy company. She would have just walked off, and I wouldn't have a clue about what's going on. It can be very useful to be likeable. It finds you out stuff_. Yes, that was definitely why. _Good old charming self. _Does_ she like me, though?_

"Hey! Ship! Let's get going, what! Come on! Got to get you fixed!" He tried not to think about... what he _hadn't_ been thinking about, no, he _hadn't_. Anyway, lots of work to do. Any minute now, he'd be running for his life, so better get moving. He ran up the steps to the console and spread his arms wide. "Merry Christmas!" he sang gleefully, throwing himself into a chair and embracing the sky. "This is the song that never ends!"

**AN: Now that awful song's stuck in your head, isn't it? Trololololol. ;-)**


	6. Chapter 6

London

December 22nd, 2021

The front door opened with a familiar noise, and Xan entered her home. The sound of the wind in the bare trees filtered in through the doorframe, then was silenced as she shut the door, giving it a shove as it stuck on the floor. Pulling off her lab coat, she sat down on the couch and picked up a book. The world melted away into tiny black print, and for a few hours, Xan was happy.

It was so utterly bizarre, the way time had flown. Hardly flown, though. Just vanished.

And Xan _still_ had too much time on her hands, even after she closed the book (Xan read at lightning speed) and set it down. She felt like she was wading through ooze. In the absence of work, Xan could find nothing to apply herself to. She reached over to a stack of blank lined paper on the coffee table, shifting around on the small couch. She pulled her knees up and propped a hardcover atlas of world history on it as an impromptu desk, and began to think of what to write. A poem, perhaps?

Lined paper was almost an antiquity, but Xan felt more at home with the friction and texture of paper than a screen. The drawback, as young deadlocked da Vinci's across the hemisphere might tell you, is that when you rest your arm on a piece of paper for long periods of time, it gets slightly damp. This had begun to onset by the time Xan placed the pencil on the paper for the first time.

She scratched down a couple of words, then erased them. What was worth writing about, anyway? But did it matter? If you were a good poet, you could pick any subject and turn it into art. So... anything. A phrase began to work its way out of her mind. She wrote:

_Born from earth_

_Sun and soil and the wind through the grasslands_

_The murmur of migrating moments and memories_

_Stories built cities and walls to enclose them._

_Born from fire_

_Raised by iron and the bellows_

_The ringing of metal on stone, the chattering of gears_

_Steam piccolos piped their tunes into tiny ears_

_Long ago, we were founded by foundry and forge._

_But a new age dawned_

_Of sparks flashing unseen in the green silicon canyons_

_Books from light and plastic_

_Carbon steps aside to its cousin_

_And the spin of stars smaller than dust motes or dewdrops_

_And then... who knows?_

As Xan wrote, warmth began to spread through her body. Once the initial block was breached, the words came easily, from all around her, channeled though her hand into actuality.

She did not notice the faint sound coming from outside the window as night fell. It could have merely been wind. Air was moving, for sure. It was the sound of air being sucked periodically into two twitching openings, and, once, the click of bone on bone accompanied by a quiet rumbling growl.

* * *

><p>Now night was blending through the windows instead of light. At first, Xan simply gasped for air, twisted among the sheets of the bed, fear pumping fire and ice and shards of rock through her veins. She couldn't even remember what she had dreamed about, but the feeling was so vivid that it clouded out all other thought. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to look around her, imagining shadows creeping along the walls of their own accord, seeing grotesque, formless faces lunging at her with open mouths. <em>A huge, burning rock, plummeting from the heavens, blocking out the entire sky<em>...

Eventually she became aware of light pulsing through her eyelids. She opened her eyes before she remembered why she didn't want to. But there was nothing alarming. Nothing... _except the watch_. The pocket watch. It sat sedately on the windowsill. Xan closed her eyes again.

Golden light, streaming through her eyelids.

This time, she saw the watch mid-pulse. In complete astonishment, she saw it glow, throbbing in a well-known rhythm. A heartbeat. She wasted no time. Flinging the covers off her, she ran to the sill and grabbed the watch, pulling on the lid, pressing the catch over and over. Still it was stuck. She grabbed a thin object from nearby, not knowing precisely what it was, and tried to use it to pry open the watch. Nothing happened. Locked. Slowly, she pressed it to her chest, on the right side. And then the curtains were opening of their own accord, and she saw... light. A strange, alien skyline.

There was no alarm clock the next morning. Only the mind's natural rhythm brought Xan back from darkness. It was a grey, thin darkness, though. The figure huddled in the corner of the room lifted its head at some silent signal. Hardly sleep, she thought, as she rose unsteadily from the floor, wondering at her location. More of a vigil. She'd been aware of every second passing. It just all smeared together now, and as she wearily replaced the sheets that had fallen from the bed in little waves, she tried to recall the dream. All she remembered was... a feeling. That was it. The feeling was not unlike the one that had frozen her for a few moments outside of the university.

Which was where she was going, right now. Why? Oh, yes, the mysterious substance. Maybe I can discover more about it. She yawned and stretched, then began to fall into her daily morning routine.

* * *

><p>London<p>

December 22nd, 2021

10:23 PM

Xan, because of her restless night, had woken up very early at around four in the morning. This is not abnormal but still not ideal for a human.

Several miles away, the Doctor woke up, fully rested, after a whole entire fifty-two minutes of sleep. He found that he, too, had awakened very early. So early, in fact, that he had got up a few minutes before had went to sleep.

These things sometimes happen when you live in a time machine.

"I had the strangest dream," he said to the massive coral growing out of the floor in the console room as he walked in, yawning hugely. "There were all these... mango-eating... aliens... lived on an asteroid...what were trying to steal my small intestine, and use it in a... a ritual to revive... something... 'n' then Martha Jones... stole all their mangoes..." The Doctor, who had been narrating expressively, stopped and thought about what he had just said. "I think I may have some kind of problem with fruit," he added. He reflected further. "What could a small intestine be used _for_? I mean, it's very... long? Or maybe it was special because it was _my_ small intestine. Maybe I have some kind of sacred small intestine. With holy powers. I really don't know... I try to see it as rarely as possible. Or _maybe_... because I'd just _eaten_ a mango, and it was in my small intes... yeah, maybe that was it, and then there was a- " He trailed off, and self-consciously smoothed out a wrinkle on his shirt collar. As if he had received a response, he said indignantly, "Well, _last_ time the dreams meant something. Why is it that dreams are only prophecies when they're all, 'doom, doom, doom,' but never when they're... mangoes? Why _not_ mangoes? What has fate got on mangoes, anyway? Or small intestines? Who says my small intestines aren't special? Why does everything have to make sense all the time?"

The ship had been a patient audience to this tirade, as it often was. The Doctor had begun to try sleeping out of curiosity, not need, and his brain seemed to have caught on well to the concept of dreaming. It hadn't been hard, and his subconscious's creativity seemed to know no bounds. It was really quite liberating. For him. Probably not for anyone who had to _listen_ to his bizarre stories when he woke up (usually his TARDIS), but definitely for him as the dreamer. So all around, it was an interesting experiment.

"I need something to eat," the Doctor remarked as he began to turn on the main engine of the TARDIS. "Something with methyl in it. And Vitamin C. I think I'm low on that. And... _no, _not_ mangoes! _And no _pears_, either, before you get any ideas!" Rather than spend time keeping a store of food, the TARDIS had a built in food replication function. At full power, it could obtain raw materials from all over the universe, but in its weakened state it merely constructed food out of spare atoms. This could give the required nutrients and the taste of food, but you knew that it wasn't really _food_ unless it was _from_ somewhere. Which didn't make any sense, and hey, food is food.

Or is it? The TARDIS had just created a bowl of something bright green. It may have been high cuisine on some planet that _wasn't_ one the Doctor was familiar with. "What's that?" He poked it, then tasted it. It wasn't too bad, actually. But it looked like baby food. "This is either karma or deliberate revenge," he said, resigning to hunger and shoveling the sauce into his mouth, hoping its ingredients were relatively ordinary. He threw the empty bowl to one side and turned to the console. "Okay, let's get you fixed. We have some work to do." He leaned forward on the console, thinking, then sprung into chaotic action, pulling tools and spare parts from hidden stashes and dumping them onto the floor in front of him. He had the air of someone reassembling a puzzle that he'd solved countless times, only the last time he'd done it had been a long while ago. He would stop and think for the merest instant, then take two or three pieces of indescribably foreign technology and fit together with complicated, frenetic motions the parts and hook them back into the main console. Sometimes he would survey the parts at hand and figure that something was missing, then pull a replacement out of his pocket, which looked far too small to hold it. Then more lights would flicker on, and he would move on to another area.

The problem is, when you possess a machine that is on the inside the size of at least a shuttle and possibly a spaceship, it can take a long time to even _find_ all the broken bits, much less fix them. Even if the ship is repairing itself. After hours of work, the Doctor found himself staring hopelessly at the ceiling, bored to tears. And, come to think of it, not feeling too well. Perhaps some form of residual post-mortem unpleasantness?

Which was, again, another mystery to be explained. And here he was, sitting and gazing at nothing, instead of trying to solve it. And it wasn't because he was tired. Some feeling inside him had calcified his will in the opposite direction. Turned his curiosity into repulsion. _I don't really _want_ to find out,_ he realized. _Isn't that odd?_

Dragging himself upright, the Doctor considered possible courses of action quickly. Immediately one jumped to the front of his mind. He needed to wait for the TARDIS to heal itself. _He_ had to _wait_ for it. Spend _time_ waiting for it. This was a rather novel experience. But, since there was no way getting around _that_, why make a holiday out of it? It was Christmas, after all. For him, Christmas was the last time to sit around and do nothing.

And there was that temporal disturbance left unexplained. That needed explaining. By someone like him. _It's what I do. It's who I am._

Of course, there was no guarantee it would be very dangerous or exciting.

Eh...

Well... actually...

He went over the conversation he had with that girl on the bus. What had she said about it? About the fuel, the company? Started in two thousand nine... Christmas... why did that sound so familiar? And she'd said something about the fuel's power output, too...

Suddenly struck by a bolt of brilliance, the Doctor sat up and grabbed his coat and a few handy pieces of alien technology, which he stuffed into his overly-large-on-the-inside pockets. Then he strode out, wondering where to begin. What time was it now? He thought quickly, doing some lightning-fast calculations. Probably one in the morning, by Earth time. Where to begin, where to begin? Usually what worked for him was to whip out a bit of technology, like a sensor, and follow the lights. Usually (to be honest) danger came to _him_, not the other way around. This whole place had a strange feeling to it, as if it were a dream. Or another world. Well, been there, done that. Of course, it could be the fact that time seemed to be acting even more non-linear than normal.

"So what's happening? What's going on?" he asked himself. "Better find out. Well, _allons-y_ then. Here we go." He took out his sonic screwdriver as he exited the ruined building, and held it up experimentally as he walked, like someone feeling for wind with their finger. He recalled the conversation he'd had with that girl. She'd said that she was looking for tau radiation. Well, that was no good. Or was it? It was everywhere in this time, and all over his equipment and ship and self, but when it was being used in more advanced technology, like, for example, hyperspatial computers and magnometic oscillators, then it could give off a sort of... sister particle, which changed its frequency. There should be only two places in this whole world that had the double frequency: the TARDIS and whatever place had manufactured the fuel or... somehow the Doctor found himself thinking of other words in place of 'manufactured,' like 'extracted' and 'grown' and even 'summoned' - _I've really been around too long,_ he thought, _seen too many weird things happen, look at me, I'm expecting the worst here_.

_Yet here I am, wandering around in the blackest winter night without even a fully functional time ship. I could have waited, kept on repairing it, but no. I got _bored_. Bored because nothing was trying to _kill_ me, that's it. I've got so used to it that I almost miss it when it's gone._

"Well, so what?" he asked the murky, chilly darkness. "Since when has that mattered? Wandering around in dark alleyways, following the shadowy figure, asking 'Who's there?' I've managed nine hundred years like that. That's how it works."

_It is how it's always worked, isn't it? Just throwing lives away, tossing them around like they were as common as hydrogen gas. Maybe I'm actually worried because I don't want to _die_. _Again_. I'm not going to get lucky twice in a row. Or, wait, hasn't it been twice already? So make that three times in a row? Or fifty billion, honestly. _

He found that the skyscrapers of the future city were looming over him already. Had he been walking for very long?

_Or maybe I'm worried because I've landed here and hours later time has turned into something four or five times as wibbly wobbly as normal and do I really expect that to be a coincidence? Something's causing the timeline to break up. Let's see, what could usually cause this kind of thing to happen? Oh, right, I remember. When something that's supposed to happen DOESN'T. Well, I wonder what that could be..._

"But then, how does this fuel stuff fit into it all? That doesn't make sense. I've got to be here for some other reason. I should have landed in the same time I took off. Something pulled me _here_. That's why- _ahhh-hah!_" He turned and watched the screwdriver, which was blinking blue. He stowed it away and pulled out a larger, more complicated device. It appeared to tell him where to go, although the device seemed to have no apparent pattern to its activity. The Doctor rushed off through the near-empty streets of relative suburbia, lit by the cold glow of compact fluorescent streetlamps. The snow that had been falling earlier had turned into icy rain, then stopped altogether, though the wind still blew ferociously, whistling by windows and rustling trees (though the trees were bare, wasn't that strange?). In fact, it was so strange that the Doctor stopped and watched the trees blowing in the wind. In the city, there was so much technological activity that inside it, the air was warmed up, making it almost feel like very, very early spring.

That's what you'd think if you couldn't see the faint outline of leaves among the branches of the foliage. You actually wouldn't be able to see it unless you had very special, very rare, and, most importantly, _inhuman_ senses. The Doctor tried to imagine what Earth would look like if time were the third dimension and not the fourth. Like a sheet of paper that's been crumpled into a ball, probably. He just hoped it hadn't torn yet.

The unreadable device had led him to a grille covering a few square feet of sidewalk. It was one of the ones that subways go under, where you can always feel the shaking as they pass by. Where it's always warmer than the rest of the street. There was someone lying down on top of it.

Robbie Hoss had not had a very good night. He never did in the winter. That was because it was cold. Mister Hoss was one of the many homeless persons in the city of London. By right of seniority, he had obtained the spot on the subway grille, and was not very eager to leave it. He pulled his threadbare blankets around himself tightly.

A hand tapped his shoulder. "Excuse me? Do you mind?" Robbie Hoss looked up to an inquisitive face worn by a tall, skinny vision of a man.

"Whuh?"

"Could you... could you move over a bit? Just for a second?"

"Unnhhhh?"

The man failed to disappear. Apparently he was not an illusion after all. Robbie Hoss rolled over to one side, instinctively deferring to a confidant authority. He kept his eyes open a crack, and watched, bemused, as the man set about loosening the grate, intently tracing the outline of the grille with some kind of skinny remote. With a bit of effort, the intruder managed to lift the grille up and skate it along the sidewalk. He pulled out a handful of wires and electronics from his pocket, pointed it at the hole, then tucked the contraption away. After thinking for a moment, he flashed a quick but dazzling smile and slid himself, feet first, into the hole in the street. A second later, a hand came up and dragged the grille back into place. There was the sound of footsteps, and then silence.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Now, since this chapter is short, I'll take the time to address readers in this author's note on some important stuff. First of all: the story 'Always'. Do not read it if you don't want SPOILERS (so, if want to let the story explain the mystery at its own pace). If you _do_ like spoilers and are just reading for the writing itself (some people find that they enjoy writing more if they know what's going to happen... idk), then 'Always' _is_ part of the story and if you want to read it go right ahead. Also, if you like Xan, the science of the story, or my writing style I highly recommend 'The Before' (it's pretty much the sequel to this story, so there ARE a few small spoilers. Nothing huge, though). Finally, please review if you like (or even dislike) the story. You can put whatever you like in the review, but here's a template that would help me out: **

**1) A quote from the story that you enjoyed/thought was funny/thought was well written (and maybe why - that's always really helpful)**

**2) your impression of Xan (not necessarily an opinion, even though those work too - an impression of her character overall; it can be just one word)**

** 3) something you think I can improve on (and a suggestion, if you have one)**

**Not that you _have_ to do this, but it would be useful to me. Just if you really liked the work and want to help me with my writing and so on.**

Avalon University

Thursday, December 23rd, 2021

There was silence, then the sound of footsteps. A door swished open and shut. Then the fragmented scraping of an old-time combination lock being spun, and the barely audible, mechanical whir of a retinal scanner. The darkness turned brown as the cabinet opened, and then the sample of fuel was lifted out of the corner carefully.

Xan set the flask down on the lab table and pulled her chair over to the desk. As she sat down, she picked up the container again and looked closely at the contents, which did not seem to have changed much. Reaching swiftly below the desk, she turned on the power for the equipment. With her left hand she twisted a flexible desk lamp to sit behind the flask and flipped it on with her thumb; with her right hand she pulled a pad of electronic paper to her and picked up a stylus. Reading over her notes, which were written in a small, neat hand, she saw:

_color: orange-gold_

_density: high_

_viscosity: low (weird)_

_internal structure: filaments/fibers/neurons? bioluminescent (possibly), like condensation of chromatin (interphase + prophase), reaction taking place in soln.: hairs + something - solution + energy... decomposition or biological process? respiration? bacteria? LOOK FOR GENETIC MATERIAL_

_centrifuge: strings settle, liquid, foam__

She added:

_why such a secret? greed or is dangerous, maybe both_

_possible harmful consequences?_

_like amnesia? hallucinations?_

_passing out for hours and not remembering or noticing? FUMES? - be careful_

_used in particle computers... radioactive?_

_weird properties? cosmic radiation? tau particles_

_distortions in time - tau radiation - blue box?__

After a pause, Xan hurriedly drummed a key:

_distortions in time - tau radi__

_distortions i__

_disto__

She deleted the last question sheepishly and rubbed her forehead. It was definitely was too early to be doing any serious work, she thought, as she blinked sleep out of her eyes. She began to set up a few simple analyses, but she always found her gaze darting back to the flask as if expecting it to do something... unexpected.

Footsteps. Xan looked up, mildly startled. Her eyes flicked to her watch, which she'd reset in the morning, so it should be accurate. The laboratory had opened for the day, although not many people would be visiting it. Her desk sat by the window, so the contents were somewhat secluded. And it wasn't as though the fuel was recognizable. No one knew what it looked like. She shoved the thin computer monitor a few inches to the side, so it was just hiding the table to anyone entering from the door. This made her feel silly, as it wasn't as though she was breaking the law. She just felt like the work she was doing shouldn't be interrupted.

She added a few words to the pad next to an earlier sentence:

_why such a secret? greed or is dangerous, maybe both, maybe_ feels_ illicit_

The door opened, and one of the scientists walked in, tunelessly humming an unrecognizable melody. Without noticing Xan, he went to his desk and turned on his computer, starting to work, still humming the song, which turned into muffled words:

"HmHMpture Science... w' do what we mus' b'cause w' can... for th' good 'f all 'f us... umm..." Here the man trailed off again, trying to remember words sung a long time ago. Xan could not stop herself.

"Except the ones who are dead," she said aloud. The man turned quickly around and peered at her. She repeated herself, this time singing in a surprisingly tuneful voice:

"_For the good of all of us, e__xcept the ones who are dead._" It was a song she hadn't heard in ages, but she knew it well, and the notes came back easily. She felt the need to clarify. "The next line of the song. From _Portal_, right?"

"Oh. Yeah. Right." The man seemed embarrassed at having been musically upstaged, or maybe at something else. "G' morning, Xan."

"You too." Xan felt the uncomfortable, guilty sensation of talking to someone who you don't know, but they know you. She tried to remember this man. She thought his name might have been Warren or Wallace or something like it. She turned back to her work and set up a test quickly. After a minute or two, the man cleared his throat and asked, "So, still here over Christmas?"

"Mm-hm."

"Um. Me too," he said lamely. Xan scrunched herself tighter together in her chair and leaned closer to the sample. The man shrugged and turned away. The door opened again. This time both scientists looked up at the figure, a woman. She crossed the room and sat down next to the man. The two exchanged a quick greeting and began to talk. Xan pulled herself even closer together and turned back to the fluid, starting to extract a sample with a sophisticated scientific pipette. A drop of liquid dangled from the end of the needle. There was a swish, and a third person entered the room. The droplet quavered and fell onto the slide.

"Hello everyone! Ready for some wonderful science?" the third intruder asked cheerfully. Why were so many people working at the lab today? Shouldn't they be at home, getting ready for Christmas? Xan adjusted the slide and placed it back under the microscope, while adding another few drops to a test tube. She reached behind her for a bottle of enzymes from the cabinet.

Swish. This time two more white-frocked scientists walked in, animatedly debating a matter of research. Almost as if physically feeling the bubble of interaction, Xan contracted even more, turning slowly into a social singularity. Some other feeling was curdling in her chest, though. She didn't quite know what it was.

The liquid in the test tube had turned black. Xan stared at it, fascinated, then quickly scrawled on the paper:

_enzyme test: positive; genetic material present!_

So now all she had to do was isolate it! Except that could take some time. Who knew what treatments had been performed on the fuel before it was ready for use? _Someone_ did, but it wasn't Xan. But if there was genetic material in it, where did it come from? Fossil fuels might have once been living, but there was no trace of the cells that had lived so long ago. It was pure carbon. But for there to be this trace amount, then it had to have been taken not too long ago. Taken from what?

Remembering the glowing hairs, another idea came to mind. Maybe it was similar to compost. Were there bacteria breaking down the fuel and releasing energy? Releasing radiation, too? It didn't add up. Xan turned back to her slowly diminishing sample and decided to test for radiation, to clear up that if she could. She didn't really know yet if it released tau particles, she just assumed it did, because of the ubiquitous nature of tau particles with modern technology, much of which ran on the fuel.

So much of modern technology runs on a fuel that we never even see. The idea of it repulsed Xan.

And floating gently to the surface of her thoughts: another time, another era. An age of black smoke in the skies, of coal and steam and mass production. On the shelves of any store: a thousand die-cast products, each exactly the same. You saw the factories churning out guns and stoves and shirtwaists. You never saw the tiny, fragile hands turning the gears, assembling the parts in the dark. A fuel you never see. One that you didn't want to see. So it kills two birds with one stone, really. Or thousands of souls with one piece of paper- an order form. Progress.

Two more drops of liquid fell in a test tube, which was placed by a device that would have to be described as one step up from a Geiger counter. Xan watched intently as the display moved.

"New project, then?" Lost in thought, Xan had missed the _swish_ of the door opening for the umpteenth time. Her head twisted up, her insides coiling and uncoiling as she tried to put together an air of innocence. The man standing over her was wearing a crisp grey suit and neat black hair. His eyes were small, pale beads. His accent, too, seemed crisp and neat. Xan hardly paused when she spoke.

"Infected tissue sample. Lymph fluid. From a survivor of the epidemic in Bhutan."

"I thought you worked with artifacts. That's what I heard from Dr. Song. You are in her department, are you not?"

"The disease followed similar patterns of infection to historical plagues such as the Black Death," ad libbed Xan masterfully. "Including the possible animal origin. The original Black Death may have been carried by Mongolian lagomorphs which spread to the Europeans on rats, which are rodents, so in the same clade (glires) as lagomorphs, and since the plague was transmissible to us, it may have been universal to Euarchontoglires, which includes primates, so I was wondering if the recent..."

"That sounds very interesting," said the businessman quickly. He nodded to her and moved on. _Who was that?_ worried Xan. _Possibly a Waterhelm executive. I got out of that one nicely, didn't I? Hmm. I wonder if there really is a connection... except the disease was specifically carried by fleas, so you'd have to take that into account... And I'm glad that man didn't know what infected lymph fluid looks like, because I really don't either. Nothing biological that I know of is that bright orange... Except, well, oranges. Duh. And carrots. And...lots of stuff... yeah, anyway... I'm hungry..._

Xan carefully returned to her investigations, although the man looked up from time to time and seemed to be checking on her. This did not bode well. If he was a high-up executive, then he might not be too pleased about this line of research. Except he thought it was lymph fluid. Or did he? And, anyway, what could he do about it? Fire her? Probably not, because she was on the university's payroll, not the company's. Get lawyers? Maybe. Except Xan had studied law as well as biology and history, and was confident in her ability to out-lawyer anyone. She was the sort of person to read over an entire legal contract before signing it, until she was absolutely sure of what it meant.

She began to put the work away anyway, clearing off the table methodically, and downloading the information she had so far onto a little thumb drive attachment to her phone. She kept a wary eye on the businessman, who was now talking on his second-generation Bluetooth, and act which is universally found to be disconcerting.

" ...another undocumented found, but can't be traced... did you say two? Oh. Right, schedule a meeting... less than a day ago... no, not since the 2019 incident... speak with the manager... primary article... I'll send out the surveyors... get a _scent_ of the market, eh? Very humorous... payroll... not likely... I'll contact them soon..."

Another voice cut distinctly through the chatter, directed at Xan, who was just tucking the fuel into her pocket gingerly, after having placed it in a tightly sealed container.

"Oh, Xan. I saw you on the bus yesterday with a _guy_. Who was that?"

"What?" Xan looked around, and saw a woman watching her, head tilted to one side. Xan tried to recall the question.

"Um. I don't really remember. He was a scientist." Xan had hardly thought about the encounter since the morning. She felt vaguely as if she were accused of something.

"Seemed like a nice bloke."

"Uh... okay..."

"How'd you meet him?"

"He... I don't know... I just sort of... found him, I guess... "

"What do you think is up with all the Christmas stories, then?"

"I don't know." _That was definitely what you would call a non sequitur. _

"You must have _some _opinion."

"I think... Opinions... are a bit like... things... that... go away when you don't think about, um, them... there's a sort of quantum uncertainty opinion principle... or they sort of, sort of, _go_ _away_ when you don't... wait, I said that already... well... basically, I don't have an opinion about something until I've thought about it for a bit..." Xan tried desperately to slide out of the room. This kind of interrogation made her uncomfortable. It assumed a level of familiarity that Xan did not feel existed here. Somehow, while she had managed confidently to lie about her work, she could not think of what to say here.

"Well, you got to be careful around Christmas, 'cause sometimes people end up not being what you think they are, if you know what I mean."

"I don't," said Xan frankly. "But thanks for telling me. I'm going to go for lunch now." She hurried to the door, had to jerk back a little when it opened too slowly, then strode out.

The grey-suited man impassively watched her go.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: This will be exciting, BTW. The fun is BEGINNING, and it's just going to get more Doctor Who-ish from here. **

On the corner of nearly every street in downtown, commercial London, there was a sloping, hard plastic hood that led into the underbelly of the city. To Xan, the path down into the subway had always seemed pleasant and reassuring, like a friendly hand. Probably because it was so familiar. Xan couldn't stop her subconscious from comparing the Underground to the New York City subway system. The grey, tented trains she remembered from her youth always seemed to be so amiable and alive, though the noise they made was not. All cities now had sleek bullet trains; the sound of the train approaching had lost its lusty clatter, and now it was only possible to hear the train when it was passing by. Rather than clattering along like some kind of segmented, subterranean mammal, they hissed through the darkness like snakes. And the subway stations were so much cleaner and smoother. The walls were biodegradable carbon ceramics, tough as a diamond, so no one could scratch their name on the walls. The train traveled on two rails, rather than the traditional maglev design, but the strength of the electric current kept away subterranean pests and no one threw garbage into the gap the train passed over.

Xan remembered subway stations covered in mosaics and fossils below museums. It made waiting below for the train to arrive an experience. There were mysterious abandoned stations and vacuum cars, and there used to be rats crawling along the tracks. Not that this was a good thing (of course it's not, right, right, very unsanitary), but it was certainly interesting to watch them. The dangerous "third rail." Lights on the tunnels, passing by: _flick... flick... flick..._

There were some people, Xan knew, who were absolutely obsessed with the subways of New York. She was not one of those people. But she could feel all of the movement of the city, and knew it like a house you've lived in for years. She knew its secrets. But she wasn't there now.

The first sign of a train coming is the track. People wait and lean precariously over the side to stare down the tunnel, but they should really be watching the track. First there is a tiny little spark of light, then nothing. Then there is a small little tremor, and then the track begins to glow as it reflects the headlights of a distant car. Then there is the hissing of the hovering train speeding through dank, underground air, and the lights on the side of the track turn on, and at last the train races into the station. Sometimes there is an even earlier signal: rustling in the debris below the tracks as the metal magnetizes.

A sleek, white nose whirled around from an unseen turn in the darkness and filled the cavity of the tunnel. As it whistled to a stop, Xan spotted a little symbol skimming the platform on the side of the cars. Each time it passed as the train slowed, the mark caught her eye, over and over. It was one she recognized: _Waterhelm Industries_.

Then the train halted, and she stepped on through the horde of commuters as round doors slid open, then seamlessly shut again moments later. Xan scanned the car for a space to sit down that didn't have anyone sitting nearby. Finding none, she took her usual station by the door, and rested her head against the metal pole as the train began to move. She watched the windows turning opaque as the subway descended. Where there had been clear glass, it was as if smoke had clouded, and dissolved in the solid panes. The candid while walls reflected the light from the ceiling, and the windows turned slowly into mirrors, reflected what was before her and behind. Xan met her own reflection's gaze as her eyes traveled along the seats. Out of instinct, she flicked her eyes away, then let them slowly return. The skinny figure through the glass watched her, and then her eyes briefly smiled, and Xan looked back, a touch of humor sparkling in her eyes.

_And that's another funny thing about humans. We see ourselves. A human can recognize itself in a mirror, and so can dolphins and elephants and chimpanzees, but most other animals can't. When we think, we can always feel ourselves thinking. We can talk to ourselves, recognize ourselves. And... it's also a funny thing, but sometimes, when we're asleep, we don't. We can't look inwards, self-reflect. And when you look at someone else, and you're thinking the same thing, then you feel the connection... maybe I've been wrong about everything. Maybe what makes us human is that we recognize ourselves... in others. And if we can't do that... how can we know who we are?_

_Maybe it's the opposite. Maybe the loneliest feeling is to look in a frame and see... eternity. Emptiness. Other people fill up that void. Make it so that you know for sure that if you keep on going, then you'll find something new. _

_And when there is no one... then you're left staring into forever. And you can never see yourself. You forget who you are. Forget _that_ you are._

She slumped back on the pole. _It's been a long time... I don't see myself anymore._

And then Xan felt something rising up inside her. A very peculiar feeling was emerging and taking hold of her mind. She clung to the handhold, dizzy, feeling like a tsunami had risen up in her inner ear. A film seemed to lift off her eyes, or maybe her ears opened, or some other sense turned on. The rush of sensory input was like the transition from sleep to wakefulness. All around her, there was a texture that reminded her of a short circuit, or broken glass: sharp, tiny points of pain.

This was not the paralysis that had overtaken her, but it was similar. This time, she felt the break as the air around her splintered like wood. And she pushed herself backwards, afraid that she would snap.

Xan then found herself watching in utter terror as the woman sitting in front of her began to age. The fault line Xan had felt crossed through the woman's face, and half of her suddenly looked old and frail. She reached out a hand to her infant child, to calm him, and a full-grown man clasped it. Xan shut her eyes, and thought she could hear, far in the distance, the rattling of the subway cars she once knew. Then it all faded to a quiet ticking, broken at first, then slowly synchronizing, and finally the real world returned.

At that moment, the lights on the ceiling faded and the subway halted.

Everyone on the train looked up, and a babble of confused British voices began to grow. People who never spoke to one another began to break that thin wall and Xan saw people turning to their neighbors, asking, 'What's happening?' or 'Was there a break?' 'I don't know, how should I know?' 'Maybe a malfunction...' 'I need to get home right now, what's holding this up?' The first thing Xan did was check her watch. She had certainly figured out by now what seemed to be happening, but no one else noticed it. The time was twelve thirty-five. Not too strange. Xan looked up at the advertisement boards on the walls, which were slowly shorting out, one by one. They all said: twelve seventeen.

Pushing through the crowds of people, Xan reached the door at the end of the car, and walked into the next crush of confused passengers. In the falling darkness, she made her way down the train. A man with a bulky coat asked her as she passed, "What's happening? Do you know?"

"I'm not sure." Xan began to start off again, then asked quickly, "Did you notice anything strange happening right _before_ the train stopped? Anything at all?" The man shook his head. Worried, Xan turned to a person standing behind her. "How about you?"

"What?"

"Did you feel something, right before the train stopped? Like something... broke?" "Something in the train?"

"No... something... this is going to sound crazy, but it was like the air shattered."

"Er. No."

"Did you see anything like... time speeding up or slowing down?" Xan couldn't stop herself.

"No... not really..."

"_Anyone?_" All people who were listening shook their heads. A few people backed away from Xan. Someone asked, "You do realize that you aren't making any sense, right?"

Xan tried to make out a figure in the dim lights of the emergency exit signs. It felt very, very cold down here, as if there was a draft. But where would the draft be coming from? They were deep inside the earth. In the tunnels.

"Yes, of course," responded Xan, a bit sharply. "I'm just trying to find out what's happening. I thought I saw something... no, I _know_ I saw something. Does anyone know what time they got on the train?"

"Noon."

"Twelve o'clock."

"Yeah, middle of the day." The mutters of the passengers seemed to agree. Xan held up her watch, squinting at it, and pressed a button on the side. The face turned blue, and then faded. Twelve thirty-six. But she was so sure that she'd set it right this time...

"_We apologize for the inconvenience. There will be slight delay due to unexpected winter weather._" At the announcement, everyone groaned, but slumped back down in their seats. Which left only Xan standing, shivering with cold. She looked around, and then dug in her pocket for her phone.

Xan had read once, on one of her commutes, that the Android-fifteen had quantum-spin computers inside it. The gadget geek who was writing the article described in length how to create a simple spinthariscope, to watch radioactive particles decay inside your phone and project it onto the screen.

The batteries of the new phones were hard to manage, and Xan wished she had a screwdriver or even a pin. Eventually, using the paper clip she'd forgotten to take out of her pocket, she pried off the cell, and set about jury-rigging the phone as well as she could remember.

Everyone on the train who did not have an iPod or other such portable device seemed to have decided that the only source of entertainment would be this bizarre woman standing in the center of the car, furiously disassembling her phone. One asked politely, "What are you trying to do?"

"Oh! I know," interjected someone in the corner. "You're trying to make a spinthariscope! I read about that in _Circuit_!"

"You did?" asked Xan, as she flipped the phone over and turned it on. She was surprised when anyone knew about whatever nerdy information she collected.

"Yeah, but you connected the wires wrong, you have to let the input feed into the camera, and you've got it backwards..."

Xan held up the phone and turned it. "This is a little more complex," she said, concentrating. The phone was on camera mode, but the screen seemed to be a little fuzzy. She pivoted smoothly on her heels. All around her, there was light. Concentrated in one area...

"It's that radiation again," she breathed. "This is... so... unlikely! And right here, it's the strongest. What does _that_ mean?"

Hesitantly, she walked towards the door. Then she stopped, and tried to look around, but the light from the emergency exit signs was barely enough to...

She looked up at the hatch on the ceiling. Indecision fluttered across her features. She frowned, hesitating, looking back to the exit, then turning away. Then, coming to a decision, she strode over to the emergency call box at the front of the car and yanked it open.

"Hello?" she said into the receiver on the wall.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, I was wondering about this breakdown."

"Not to worry about, not to worry about at all. It's only a minor delay..."

"The _power_ in the cars is _dead_," said Xan with vehemence. "All the ad boards are shorting out. The lights are off. The climate control isn't working - it's freezing down here. Can you explain that please?"

"Nothing seems to be wrong in the front of the train."

"How can this be an ordinary breakdown?" chattered Xan as her jaw began to shiver with cold. She pulled her jacket on from around her waist. "Do you know what happens in a _ordinary_ breakdown? The train _stops_. That's it. That is _it_. The _lights_ don't go _off_, the _ads _don't_ break_. Please work with me here!" Somehow, from a dark, distant place, the memory of a feeling was awakening. It was like in a nightmare or a vision, when you _know_ what's going to happen; not clearly, but enough to scare you. And the fear comes from the feeling that nothing you can do will stop it.

"Just stay calm, all right."

"I am calm," said Xan in tones starting to hint at panic. "It's dark and everything's breaking and I'm hallucinating and there's radiation everywhere. Of course I'm _calm_."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Um. Nothing. Never mind. How soon will the train get going?" Xan tried to relax and breathe evenly, but she was definitely beginning to feel nervous.

"Soon."

"_How_ soon," asked Xan, "is_ soon?_"

"I don't know."

"Do you actually know what's going on?"

There was a pause.

"No."

_Click_. The line went dead. Xan lowered herself into a seat and looked around. All the people in the subway car were suddenly even quieter than before. They looked about each other and at the floor, and Xan began to see faces that matched her own. Nervous smiles were being exchanged. It grew quieter still. Getting to her feet again, Xan marched up to the door of the car, and pushed decisively on the button. _I'll find out what's happening from these people in person,_ she thought. _They're probably up in the front._

The door did not move. Xan pushed harder, thinking it stuck. It didn't move. Maybe all the electronics were broken. She hammered on it, but it was broken for sure. She jerked the handle. No. It wasn't that the button was broken. It was that the door was locked. Xan banged on the door, hoping that the people in the next car would hear and open it. Pressing her ear to the door, she ignored the alarmed reactions of the people around her. Someone had rushed to the door on the other side and was trying to force it open, but it was locked tightly. Another had hurried back to the emergency call frantically pushing on the console next to it, but the connection had broken. Through the door, Xan could hear more hammering. The people in the next car must have found out that they were... they were... _locked in_. Everyone was pulling out their phones and trying to call, but there was no reception this deep. After a few moments of panic, everyone returned to their seat, restless but utterly silent.

"Merry Christmas," said Xan, with a shrug. It was all she could think of to say.

And everyone looked at one another and Xan saw, to her amazement, that they were ducking their heads away to contain laughter. A young woman giggled helplessly, and a couple sitting across from her let out amused snorts. But there wasn't only amusement in people's eyes. There was a hint of determination, spiced with camaraderie. And, of course, fear. Xan stood up, and let out a breath of air. Her pulse had begun to rise. She shut her eyes, steeled her nerves, and asked, "Can anyone give me a boost?" and pointed at the emergency exit on the roof of the car. At the quiet that followed, she added, "Someone's got to see what's going on. I can get to the control car from here following the tracks."

"But you don't know what's out there," a passenger quavered.

"Sure I do. Train tracks."

"_Things happen down here,_" whispered someone.

"Can anyone give me a boost?" repeated Xan firmly. Inside, she was feeling a bit nauseous, but none of that was betrayed in her voice. There was another long silence. Xan clenched her fists. Then, a shudder shooting through her jaw, she jumped, and grabbed hold of the handle, swinging her body around and bracing herself against the pole in the middle of the car. All the passengers watched in disbelief. After a few fumbling misses, she was able to pull the handle down. Emergency exits were never locked, as a rule. They weren't controlled with electricity, but only simple machinery. The hatch released and slowly lifted. Holding the sides of the space firmly, Xan pulled herself up and onto the roof of the train, clinging to it as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. She stood up carefully, feeling about for the ceiling of the tunnel. There was simply open space. Xan blinked harder and looked about.

There was a whispering, and an echoing thud from somewhere very far away. Xan felt her insides choke with fear, but shook it off. She slid her legs over the side of the train and dropped down, slipping a bit on the uneven surface. The tunnel was incredibly dirty in comparison to the stations. Miles and miles of underground had been converted into tunnels for the high-speed trains. Not all of it could be maintained, surely.

On her route to the front of the train, she saw a door on the side of the wall. Suddenly quite curious, she stepped across the tracks and came up to it. She tried the handle, which refused to move. Of course.

She began to see more clearly now, and didn't especially like what she saw. The walls were dirty and the air was cold. There was a funny smell, too, wafting through it, and the blue and brown and purple darkness was only slightly accented by lights, spaced very far apart. No one was ever expected to be down here. Xan went back to walking quickly parallel to the train. The subway seemed to have stopped in an intersection, and two other tunnels branched off. Out of habit, Xan stared down the empty track. For some reason, she found herself pulling out her phone and holding it up. The gloom of the empty tunnel disappeared when she viewed it through the camera function she'd put together. Radiation was pouring out from the tracks. She took a few steps forwards.

Her foot kicked an object in the dark. Reaching down, she found her hands closing around something rounded and lumpy. It was hard, like plastic or glass. She peered at it. Recognition began to cross her features. The object was a fuel cell. Empty, of course. Xan flipped through her phone's features. One was a flashlight. The darkness curdled back before the thin light, and where it receded, Xan could make out two more cells... maybe three...

A switch turned on in her mind, and then the CFL bulb in her head slowly illuminated. She stood and waited, thinking hard.

The slightest sound. A loud, mechanical whisper. Xan twisted her head and then whirled around.

"_Stop!_" she screamed over the hum. Too late. Horrified, Xan rushed to the main track. "It's gone," she whispered. "How...? It... _It's gone! The train left! It left! The damn damn DAMN thing! It's gone!_" The lights of the subway disappeared into the underbelly of the city, winking out as it twisted around a corner. Xan watched it go, and wanted to scream after it, to curse and yell and vomit profanity to hold down the bile in her chest. But she couldn't. What good would it do? There was no one to hear her. No one in the empty, _empty_ tunnel.

* * *

><p>Not Too Far Away<p>

December 23rd, 2021

_This_ was a room full of bleached, brittle light, without a trace of natural yellow. There was a peculiar lack of personality to it, a place where few people would want to spend their time. There were no windows at all, and air vents were disguised along with the lights, and the doors, and everything else. Save for the opacity of the walls, the whole place could have been a high-rise office building that had sunken into the earth. Decorating the walls were abstract pieces of art, and a few minimalist sculptures had taken root in the spotless corners. The floor was polyester stubble of beige carpeting. A hand reached out and touched the electronic surface of a desk planted right in the middle of the room. A small noise sounded and there was a knocking at the door moments later.

"Come in."

A short man entered, carrying a glass of water, which he placed on the desk. He watched the back of the tall chair. A toneless voice came from behind it: "That is an electronic, state-of-the-art, touch-screen monitor."

"That's right, sir."

"It is a very expensive piece of equipment."

"I know it, sir."

"Did you just put a glass of water on it?"

"It is also waterproof, sir. Specially designed."

"Is it?" The chair swiveled and its occupant looked at the man in front of him. Who was leaving the room. The man sitting in the chair sighed magnificently.

"Why do I bother?" he asked the desk. "It's pointless." He took the glass of water and thoughtfully poured a portion of it onto the screen, which turned a strange color. The man watched it calmly, then touched the patch on the side of his head.

"Are the desks, in fact, waterproof?" he said to the air. There was the muffled sound of a response. "No? Well, in that case, let's have one made that is, shall we? Don't ask me how, just do it. I am going to check up on our friends in the laboratories. You have..." He looked at his watch. "Fifteen minutes." Then the man pressed his patch again and stood up. Leaving the bubbling surface without a second glance, the man exited the room and put on a grey jacket.

Fifteen minutes passed, and the door opened again. There was a new desk sitting innocently in the center of the room. The grey-suited man looked at it, and picked up a glass of water. He turned his head to one side, considering whether or not to pour. Then he placed the cup down and sat back in the chair. A droplet of water had formed on the screen, and he wiped it away thoughtfully. As he did so, the screen turned on and suddenly a map appeared on the black surface. The man watched carefully, and then he reached up and pressed his wireless patch.

"You were right. There _is_ one. South of the central complex, maybe a few miles." He listened, then looked closer at the map. "A disturbance, not too long ago? That's not an issue. Don't worry about it." There was the muted sound of extreme protestations in the earpiece. "That's not happening," said the man flatly. "_No matter what_. If we lose that, then we lose everything." He listened some more. "They're getting worse because of the subject that you have failed to find. For nearly two years it's been out there, somewhere, and _you_ can't seem to muster together the resources to find it and use it for what it's good for." There was a long, complicated response, and the man in the chair's expression changed. "They've found something? So soon? Prepare them. Yes, now. I don't need to tell you why. You aren't authorized... Oh. He wants to know? Then leave him this message. Tell him that I think _he's_ come back. Well, just because _you_ don't understand me doesn't mean... anything. Just give the message. And _don't_ turn off the... good." Then the man in the chair, who was still watching the screen, became silent for a few moments. In a soft, dangerous voice he said to the person on the other end of the line, "Why is there someone standing right in front of our east entrance? Get someone to _handle_ that, if you would be so kind."

* * *

><p>Below London<p>

December 23rd, 2021

Xan got to her feet and began to trudge, swaying slightly, deeper into the darkness. Somewhere along this tunnel there had to be a station, or a maintenance post, or whatever. If she just kept on walking, she had to get somewhere. It was narrower here than in the main passage, and Xan figured it was some kind of service tunnel.

When she'd realized that the train would not return twelve phone call attempts, four fits of helpless rage, and forty straight minutes of banging on doors and walls and climbing to the ceiling earlier, Xan had made up her mind. The initial fear had worn off and she had become accustomed to the dark. The shadows hadn't quite killed the spark of adventure inside her. At least she knew that if she kept on walking, she would eventually reach... some place. Twice she'd had to throw herself against the wall as trains sped past, and she watched them go. The first time, she tried to call out to the people on the subway, but she knew that no one would be able to hear her. She had not a clue where to head, but did it matter?

She followed the radiation. For some reason, it seemed to work as a trail. There was no reason not to go down those paths. Often, Xan would see empty fuel cells lying in the space between the rails.

As she walked, Xan thought about the radiation, trying to make sense of everything. The train had stopped, right after that strange feeling... was there a connection? Was that the _third_ time she'd noticed a... disturbance? And it connected to the radiation because... why? The radiation was emitted by the disturbances. Something emitting the radiation was causing the disturbances. The fuel emitted the radiation. Something. But everything _used_ the fuel.

A meteor made of wood had landed in a factory. It made no sense at all. Where was the link? There was something tying it together, there had to be. And something to explain why she was here, in the tunnels, wandering around like someone in a horror movie about to be murdered. What had led to this?

Why had she left the train? Well, somebody had to. It had broken down. Why had the train broken down? Because of the disturbance. Why was there a disturbance? I don't know. How should I know? Okay, let's try a different route. How did the train break down? It all stopped. The power shut off. What powers the train?

The fuel powers the train. Who makes the fuel?

Waterhelm. What else do they make?

The trains. The trains are designed to run on the fuel made by the same people who designed the trains in the first place.

All right, so, the fuel is very powerful. I know that. What kind of power is it?

The energy isn't from biofuel. Because biofuel doesn't emit cosmic radiation. Not ordinary biofuel. Not from ordinary... well... _bio_... life...

If the radiation causes the disturbances, or relates to them somehow, then it's got to do with... got... to... do... with... _time_.

It damages _time_. How do I know that? Because my watches acted weird? I could have been hallucinating. What if the fuel gives off fumes that cause hallucinations?

But then, why would no one else have ever noticed it? No one said they saw anything strange. Why can only I notice it?

This didn't start with the meteor, did it? Yes. It did.

Or... not _quite_...

My watch... broke... No. It didn't break. It woke me up, right on time. Right on time to see the meteor. That's a heck of a coincidence.

But it began before that, right? When I started to notice tau radiation. When I began to study it. When did that happen?

When I came here, to Avalon. A few years ago. And before that... I was at grad school in America. I think. And before that... I don't remember. But somewhere there Waterhelm first started. In 2009. What was I doing then? Why can't I remember?

Is that the beginning? No. Christmas has been like this here for longer than that. When was the first time?

_D'you mean the very, very, very first time?_ _Good old days, eh?_

The very, very, _very _first time? The way he'd said it, as if it was so important. As if it was important to _him_. And where did Xan find him? In the wreck. He clearly hadn't been there before. And he said he'd crashed...

Crashed his _car_. Not his...

_Stranger things have happened this time of year. I would know. Seen 'em all._

Xan tried to remember everything. The box emitted the radiation. That had to be it. It matched the description she'd put together. Put together from what? Artifacts from all around the world, from ages ago and very recent. So... then...

And the distortions were... temporal distortions...

Could it possibly come together like this? Was this the picture Xan was trying to form out of puzzle pieces? It certainly was not what she expected. It seemed so unlikely, so laughably dramatic, so... _familiar_? Why did it all seem so familiar? Like in a dream, she thought, when you think you know what's going to happen, but not details, just...

And then Xan looked down and saw particles of dust rustling in the tracks. What did that mean? She slowly pulled the paper clip out of her pocket and...

..._dropped_ it onto the track, where it stuck upright, vibrating. The rails were magnetizing. Xan shut her eyes and listened closely. _The first sign of a train coming is the track. _Then she turned to the walkway but...

There was no walkway next to the track. She looked closely at the rails and tried to judge the width of a train passing through this... _narrow_... tunnel.

_Too. Damn. Wide._

Xan turned around, staring about her wildly, her heartbeat suddenly racing faster than she'd ever felt it before. Cold, tingling, electric drops of sweat were forming on her skin.

_Run. Run! Go! NOW!_ But which way was the train coming from? Would she be running away from it, or towards it? Did it matter? How can you outrun a bullet train? Xan had been walking down this tunnel for ages. She could never reach the crossing- _JUST RUN! YOU CAN'T STOP!_

What was the point? She couldn't...

There was a little spark of light on the track, and a tremor. Xan tried to take a few steps, but couldn't even feel her legs. Why couldn't she think straight? Why couldn't she move? She had to move! MOVE!

The track began to light up, reflecting far-away headlights. Xan remembered, through her frozen thoughts, learning that Albert Einstein had figured out relativity by imagining he was riding a beam of light.

Xan wished she was doing that. Right now. In whatever direction was safest. She wished she could run. No. She wanted to stand here and pulverize the train, blow it to pieces, make it never, _ever_ come near her. Why is this happening?

She heard it. Heard the whispering. By the time she saw the train, it would be too late. It was too late already... _no no no please no this isn't happening no make it stop go away please PLEASE_... She tried running again, but it was useless. She knew she would never get anywhere...

Barely five seconds had passed since she'd dropped the paper clip onto the track. Time had seemed to slow down, but it was speeding up again, speeding like a bullet train, straight towards her, roaring, snarling, hissing, _not stopping_, flashing through the dark... _NO! PLEASE! STOP!_

Can I stop it? Break the track? Somehow? But won't its momentum... how could I...? I have to do something!

The other train stopped. The one I was on. Why? The fuel? Time is breaking. Have to break it... have to _brake_ it... something's missing... tau radiation... the box... the _man_... the _watch_... pulsing... a heartbeat... Glowing... glowing yellow... like the fuel... the hairs in the fuel in the train glowing shining burning... like the planet, crashing into Earth... or the star... the falling star... not a star at all... but it still _burns_... burning flaming blazing _lights bright lights_ _HEADLIGHTS!_

And a shout, and the sound of shoes pounding on metal and gravel, and suddenly Xan was being flung to the ground and held there by someone yelling in her ear, "_DON'T MOVE! DON'T MOVE!_" as the train rocketed over their heads like a thunderclap.

For a moment, Xan couldn't feel anything. A disconnected neuron dangling in her ganglia told her, _Even if you don't die because of the train, you might possibly die of terror._ Then even that part of her mind shut down as her heart stopped beating.


	9. Chapter 9

It started again, spluttering like a boat engine, when she realized that the train was disappearing into the tunnel behind her. She found that her senses were returning. There was the sound of terrified breathing from four lungs, and she could feel that, too, pressing on top of her. And a panicked heartbeat, yes, that was there too, pumping blood furiously, but there seemed to be something about it, about the way it felt, that was not what it should be. The smell of fuel, and of sweat, and of electricity humming in the air. A cheek pressing against her own, arms wrapped tight around her shoulders. Xan's eyes, blinded by the lights of the train, began to adjust to the dark again as the man lifted his head cautiously. He seemed unable to find words at first, but then gasped, "Well, that was fun." He sounded as if he meant it, too. He grinned at her. She stared at him. Then she pushed him off.

"_You_!"

"Me!" He sounded so pleased with himself.

"_YOU?_"

"Who else?"

"Just about anyone!"

"I _am_ me, right?"

"How should I know? What are you doing down here?"

"Saving your life. Obviously. You're welcome, by the way. Any time."

Xan didn't respond, and her frozen gaze didn't shift. All her bones seemed so loose, like they had turned into jelly, or she had somehow morphed into a cartilaginous fish. On the outside, she looked merely terrified. But her mind was racing, thoughts flying together and colliding and possibly even creating the Higgs Boson. You could have sharpened a pencil in her ear.

The man grabbed her wrist and hauled her up. "Better get moving, Alexandra Russell," he said cheerfully. "No sense lying around all day."

"What are you _doing_ down here?" she repeated, pulling her hand away. "Tell me! Now!"

"How about _you_ go first?" he said smugly.

Xan found this irritating. "I was on a train and it stopped," she said, as though talking to a child. "All the power died. Then I got out, because we were locked in the car, and the train left."

"That's not why you left," the man told her, as if exasperated by her apparent dishonesty. "You came down here _following_ something, didn't you? Am I right? Obviously, I am. The question is, what? Was it that _radiation_ again?"

"Is this _really_ the time?" she shot back. "Because I think the train nearly running us over is a little more... important..." Her taut nerves pulled a joyless, disbelieving smile across her face. Every muscle in her body was stiff and quivering with the tension. Xan knew she was turning pale. For some awful reason, tears had begun to form in her eyes. She wiped her face angrily, trying not to imagine the lights of the train as they rushed towards her, but they filled her mind, and suddenly she was being run over and literally trampled by the sheer force of reality, of the fine line between life and death.

"You don't look so good," the man said calmly. "Indigestion?"

Her eyes were like jade tombstones. "Explain," she commanded. "Everything."

There was a noise coming from the darkness. Xan whipped her head around, and looked back at the man again.

"Is this _really_ the _time?_" echoed John Smith innocently.

"So does this happen to you a lot, people trying to kill you?"

"Pretty much all the time."

She had been trying for sarcasm, but it all fell apart. "Ah. Oh! Okay! It's like... like a book. Adventures and... things..."

"Yes, except... books can't kill people."

"Crusades," said Xan. "Spanish inquisition. Salem Witch Trials."

"Well played." He grinned. "But I bet you have no idea how right you are."

"Is your name _really_ John Smith?"

"Well... no. It isn't."

"It's not the most original alibi, you know. But your point was that it's not just a story. I can't just go skipping around, waiting for the happy ending."

"Exactly."

Xan pointed down the tunnel and snorted. "You think I haven't figured that out already? Train? Flattened? Death by locomotive? '_Aviso! La via del tren es muy peligroso?_' The little signs, with the stick figures dying in unpleasant ways?"

"_Aviso?_" the man repeated, laughing.

"New York City. All the signs are translated in about five languages."

"Oh?" "And here, too. '_Attention! Le chemin de fer est très dangereux!_'" She assumed a posture of stern authority. "'_Achtung! Die Bahn ist sehr gefährlich!_' I know 'em all." Xan had a good memory for languages, and habit of reading signs. She read just about everything. "_Omnia legere mihi possum,_" she explained,"_certe legam. Si facere non potuero, modo disco. Atque... Latine saepe dicere, sed illud non est clarum. _What's the plan?"

"You really _are_ quite an enigma, Xan Russell; that's why I thought I'd be seeing you again... Well, running's a good plan. I like running."

"So do I."

"Unless a train's about to hit you?"

Xan's eyes narrowed as she smiled, making her suddenly look very serpentine. "Which way?"

"That way seems good. _Any _way seems good, if it's _away_ from what's down there. And we have just about two choices, so... that way." He held out his hand. "Come on. It'll be fun. Probably more fun than not, at any rate. When you think about it."

Xan took his hand slowly, feeling like a contract had just been signed. In her own blood. She took another breath, and then a few steps.

A sound came out of the blackness behind her, a feral snarl.

She slammed on her internal accelerator. "Let's get _moving_, then!" she yelled, and they were dashing off into the darkness, with Xan dragging the man behind her, making him look almost exactly like the awkward owner of a hyperactive mastiff.

And there was a snarl from far behind them that sounded nothing at all like a hyperactive mastiff, yet there was something analogous about the two.

Xan felt goose bumps shivering up the sides of her face like storm-driven winds through grass or branches as she sped along the tracks. The moments were flashing by so quickly they seemed to trip over one another. Time lost any meaning, with every heartbeat spastic from adrenaline, a psychotic fairground ride replacing a pendulum as her pulse. Every second hurtled back and forth on an elastic band too fast for thought. No time to think. Simply... _do._

And a jolt pulled Xan back by the arm, and four pairs of shoes skidded on the earth. She masterfully maintained balance.

"What's- ?"

"_SHHH._" The man was staring about wildly. The next second, he was tugging Xan towards a door concealed in the grimy walls, and testing the handle, which rattled. His hand flew into his inside coat pocket and emerged holding a tool of some kind that he directed at the lock. A whine emitted from the end, which glowed blue. Then, somehow, the door was open, and he was pushing Xan inside, diving in after her, and slamming the metal back into its frame.

A few moments of utter darkness passed. The space was not very large. Xan tried to cautiously edge away from the man, then heard another unpleasant, animal noise and stopped dead. Her vision was returning, but she didn't even move her eyes, in case that made some tiny noise. Something on the other side of the wall galloped by, a strange, unfamiliar gait pounding out a beat accented by air whistling through blades.

More seconds passing. The sound faded as quickly as it came. Xan shifted very slightly and mouthed, _Is it gone?_ The man nodded. _Will it come back?_ she added urgently. The man slid down the wall so that his mouth was level with Xan's ear. "_I think it's following my smell,_" he hissed.

"_But won't our scent be stronger where we actually are?_" responded Xan slowly and deliberately, her vocal cords barely thrumming. "_Why follow an older trail?_"

"_The walls_," whispered the man. "_These are _really _old tunnels. Lead paint coats, under the newer layer._" He moved cautiously towards the door and listened against it. Very gently, he turned the handle and pushed the door outwards.

"_So then it must be smelling-_" began Xan as he did so. There was a creak. They both froze. Then the man slowly inched through the gap. Xan slipped after him delicately, and glanced back at the niche they'd hidden in. It was a power station. The stations sat next to the tunnels and were used by maintenance crews to remotely access the places where the power was generated for the track. In case anything useful came of it, she peeked back inside. Switches coated the walls. Some were large and thick and important-seeming, others, thinner and smaller, appeared more specialized. Xan pulled her head out again as the man put a hand on her shoulder.

"So the thing smelled the radiation," said Xan carefully. "You smell of tau waves... lead paint blocks radiation. _Smelling_ radiation...that's incredible. Why on earth," she went on, rankled by the apathetic nature of public servants, "would the paint not have been removed by now? Corporations that can't be bothered with safety, only money. Governments that can't be bothered with anything, period. The world is so full of unnecessary health hazards."

"Like, for example, trains that try to run people over," pointed out the man.

"I'll see that bid, and raise you one abyssal monster stalking the Underground."

"Oh, pish. That's nothing. Here? At this time of year? In present company?"

"Did you just say- ?" Xan started to ask, highly amused, but the man cut her off.

"If the... I dunno... abyssal... wotsit... it came from there, okay, and the train did too... so what's down there that we shouldn't be seeing?" The look he gave Xan was almost a dare.

"But if we head down that way, what's to stop our not-so-friendly friends from sending another train our way?" she asked, slowly. "Because that _is_ a tactic they have shown themselves to be capable of. And willing to use."

"So you're scared?" said the man smugly. Xan stared innocently back.

"I'll answer my own question, then," she said as she reentered the power station. She found the biggest, thickest switch and gripped it tightly with her right hand. "_This_ will." With one powerful flex of her muscles, she pulled it down, and there was a loud _clunk_, and the tunnels became even quieter than before. The lights spaced along the tracks slowly winked out. Reddish lights directly below them flickered on. A dial by the switch moved the needle inexorably down to point at a tiny '0'.

Xan backed out of the room and closed the door. "If you can unlock it, can you lock it again?"

"Because if main power's off for this section of the track," said the man, his eyes sparkling as he reached for his grey device once more, "The tracks are off, and any security systems connected to the grid are off too, and..." He pointed the blue light at the door's lock and frowned slightly. "But then they know that we were here, in the power station. They'll expect us to be coming. They'll expect me."

"And they'll be pissed," added Xan.

"Right, so..." The man looked at his companion. She had the most evilly innocent expression on.

She stretched like a cat and smiled. "And, possibly, a bit scared, if they're willing to go to such lengths to keep you away."

Light dawned in the man's eyes. "A bit? They're probably panicking already."

"So I expect."

"And if we expect them expecting us, then I expect they'll expect us to expect ourselves... unexpected. But we expect that. So the expectation they _don't_ expect from us will be... what's unexpected."

"And if you tell them that, in so many words..." Xan paused. "Their heads might rapidly and irrevocably oxidize."

"Rapidly and irrevocably oxidize..." The man turned the words over with his tongue, tasting their syntactic value. "Oooh, that's fun to say. Well, so, ready then?"

"Before the abyssal hounds from subway hell are, sure. Do you have _any_ clue what they are?"

"Generally, yes, specifically, no."

"So?"

"Exotic... mutants... of course."

"Yes, of course," said Xan sarcastically as they started hurrying towards the hungry dark, through the red haze. "Whose idea was it to have the emergency lights be so apocalyptic? This isn't a Federation starship at red alert. It's not a high security vault. It's a subway tunnel."

"A very ordinary subway tunnel full of monstrous hounds from the abyss, as you put it."

Xan stopped walking and stared into nothingness with wild-eyed horror. "The world has gone insane. It's simply turned upside down and folded in on itself and who knows what's been happening to the fabric of space-time and to be very honest, I don't know why I don't feel the need to curl up in a corner and pee myself," she said.

"Well, that was very honest."

"Yes, it was, and I don't know _why_ I'm being honest right now. Now is not the time for truth. Now is the time for intricately constructed lies to comfort and support my sense of reality."

"If we're on this vein, then I don't suppose now is a bad time to point out that your sense of reality _is _an intricately constructed lie," said the man, offhand. "In fact, it's a survival trait."

Xan shook her head slowly. "I've been seeing patterns before this. Tendencies. Trends. They barely exist, but they do. I'm not a conspiracy theorist," she said, gesturing vehemently as she said this to show how crazy she was _not_, "not in any way, shape, or form. I am a _scientist_. Science is about disproving theories. Conspiracy is about _proving_ them. Like religion. It's about _not caring that the facts don't support your idea_. Not caring, and trying not to notice."

"So what are you trying to _disprove_ by coming down here?"

"Well... I guess... that I'm not crazy?" she laughed nervously. "I don't know... All this time, and you still haven't answered my question."

"Yes I have."

"No, you haven't." "I don't know what you're talking about," he said smoothly.

"What are you doing down here? Some kind of international espionage agent?"

"I know you're trying to say spy, but you don't seem to want to."

"Undercover subversive investigator. Government-enlisted information relay. Intelligence operative. James Bond."

"You may know your way around a thesaurus, but do you know your way around subways tunnels as well?"

"Good job at evasion. I distinctly notice that you failed to answer my question. _Again_."

"Do you want to know who I really am?"

"Yes. That's why I kept _asking_."

"No. You don't. You... can't." The red lights were becoming more closely spaced. "It's warmer here. I think we're close to either a station or..."

It _was_ a station. But it wasn't one in use. It had the shape of a station, but where there should be lights and shuffling passengers and vending machines, there was crimson darkness. The smell of age and earth fluttered down from metal rafters, and settled on the floor. Xan hoisted herself up onto the platform easily, and wiped her hands on her pants. Dust coated the floor.

"It's like the place has been... mummified," she said wonderingly. "An abandoned station. This is _too_ _cool_. I mean... it's extremely... intriguing... _awesome!_" She struggled to maintain composure.

"But people have been here before," mused the not-John-Smith. "Quite often, I'd say. So I don't know if _abandoned _is really the right adjective to be using here..." He pointed to the ground. Xan could see footprints of varying sizes and some exceedingly non-human prints as well.

"That," she said flatly. "Whatever made that..."

The man pulled her onwards with a quiet word. She jiggled a little with pent-up awe. "It's like... science fiction... so _incredible_... all this time..."

"The footprints stop here."

"At a wall. So it isn't a wall. A door. Unlock it. Go on." She pulled on his wrist and stood him in front of the wall expectantly.

The man looked at Xan appraisingly. "Yes, O Great One," he said with much the same tone as his expression. "Anything you command."

Xan slapped his arm as her face reddened slightly and mumbled "Shuttup." She pressed her palms against the wall, trying to hide her embarrassment. They came away grey and dirty. "This was your idea," she told him, sullen detachment edging its way into her voice and dampening her enthusiasm as she wiped her hands again on her clothes.

"No, I distinct remember it was _yours_."

"Noitwasn't_,_" she said indistinctly. "B'cause you said th't we sh'd find out wh't w's down here th't we w'rn't s'pposed to see." The vowels were getting caught between her teeth as she spoke, and her throat was resting against her chest because she'd almost literally retracted it like a turtle.

"Actually it-" A soft sound emanated from the black night behind them, like a growl. "...was..." He trailed off. Xan's head shot out of her shell. Suddenly they were shouting at the same time:

"Open it! Open it!"

"I'm _trying_!" A whistling, mechanical noise intermingled with the voices as a blue light was frantically waved about.

"NOT AT ME! Oh GOD my EARS! Go! Go! NownownownowNOW!"

"I don't know where to... Is there a _handle? No!_ How should I know...?"

"IN! GET IN!"

A door slammed shut.

**AN: Xan does like to show off, doesn't she? The Latin there (which I composed myself, so that's why there would be any errors) loosely translates to: 'Everything that I can, I will certainly read. If I don't know how, I learn. Also... sometimes I speak in Latin, but that's not important.**'


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: ... and the next part is here! Don't worry, the (rather short) wait is over! At this point it should be clear that I am not writing a dull ode to my OC (but then, was I really in the beginning?... don't answer that :P). There is action, there is mystery, there are monsters, and there is an awful lot of running to do! But, before I put up the next part of the story, please review! And, if you want to help me out (and make me more likely to post sooner), be specific. I'm not just throwing the entire story out there (I _could_ do that, most of the story's already written, but I don't think I will) because I want to know how people are responding to it. So if you really want to read more of the story, then review. Preferably a review of a particular element of the story, not just the whole thing (although that's fine too).**

The first door they encountered was locked. That posed no difficulty, though. Xan wouldn't have thought that sonic devices could be used for electronic hacking. Because the doors were, she knew, all locked electronically. Xan realized this, once she noticed the black eyes watching from the ceiling and, thought at seeing the tiny pieces of high-tech machinery in the walls, that the security on this place must have been pretty heavy, but it was all out now that she'd shut the power off. They'd have to be careful of that when it came back online, which wouldn't be long, even though the man had assured her that he'd deadlocked the power systems. But even so, it was impressive that merely an archeologist and a highly un-expectable doctor of some sort armed with a sonic tool could break in so easily. Although, she thought grimly, Murphy's Law was just waiting to eat its heart out in a situation like this.

Once the door was unlocked, they both waited outside, backs flat against the wall on either side of the opening, in case anyone stupid enough to investigate a door which opened by itself (_Like me! _both Xan and the man thought, at nearly the same time) who couldn't figure out that someone would be hiding where they were decided to come out.

No one did.

The man gave Xan a little look that implied, _What the hell, I'm going in_, and faced the doorway. For a moment he peeped inside, then beckoned to Xan to follow, the coast having officially been declared clear by expert opinions. But the room disappointed Xan slightly. It looked much like one of the labs in the university, but it was completely empty.

"Maybe they were expecting us," she said. "And they cleared out everything. I mean, it wasn't as if we were especially covert or anything. They sort of knew we were coming." But her mind began working at full speed again. "Maps. Emergency maps, labs usually have those, in case of fire. And they have to show every escape route, in case one's blocked, right?"

The man was focused on a stain on the floor. He murmured, "On _this_ floor... this particular material... hmm... got to be... that accounts for the color... then it must be from an enzyme... EcoRI, maybe, mixed with an acid..." This much Xan understood out of a mess of words and terms she really didn't, some of which didn't even sound like English. EcoRI was a restriction enzyme, used to splice DNA together and break it apart. She'd used it countless times. So this lab had been used to create recombinant genomes. DNA transformation and manipulation. So far, that wasn't a major crime. She examined the walls near the exits, where emergency signs usually were. Nothing. Maybe this place didn't care if there was an emergency: memorize the exits yourself, lowly drones. Fine, then. She could hardly expect conscientiousness after the train tried to kill her.

"We should move on. Who knows when they get the security back online? What if this place is like Black Mesa and they've got turrets installed and random other junk like that? Minus the alien facecrabs, of course."

"I'm sorry, _what_?"

"A video game. _Half-Life_,it's called. There's an underground facility called Black Mesa, and it accidentally opens up a portal to some unbelievably hostile alien world, and then everyone dies except for you, because the aliens get them, or the badly designed security system does, or the Marines who come in to cover it up do, or you kill them with your own stupidity, like turning on a broken elevator shaft while they're stuck inside it. Um. You go around hitting things with a crowbar. And shoot at the aliens and whatnot... not my type of game, to be honest. Although I wouldn't mind a weapon right now. Maybe not a gun, but a crowbar, for sure."

"How about a sonic screwdriver?"

"Can you... hit things with it?"

"I don't think so. No."

"The point of a weapon is to defend yourself. With it. Against. Things."

"Don't need _weapons_," he scoffed. They reentered the hallway.

"_We_ don't? Or, _you_ don't?"

"Not when I've got this." He tapped his skull.

"Yeah! Screw guns! Head-butt everything!" Xan cheered. "I like this plan."

The man could find no response to this.

The next few rooms were equally empty, except to the man who, as Xan kept reminding herself, _wasn't_ John Smith. Which kept on begging the question, _who was he?_ She had basically led herself here, and although she would probably be dead without this man, he didn't seem to fit in. What was his motive for exploring this place? So, she'd arrived at the spy theory. But spies had to be unnoticeable, and it would compromise security to allow an outsider to tag along. Being around only intelligent people, scientists and historians and archeologists, Xan had become used to the kind of thinking the man kept on displaying as he ran his hands along the walls, examining it for evidence of... what, exactly? Some odd criterion that made this all fall in his area of expertise? He was a scientist, or an intellectual at least. The way he talked didn't match what you'd expect from the average citizen. Xan was just so used to thinking to herself that she found it normal to hear scientific jargon spewing forth at a constant rate.

What she began to hear, though, as she watched him scrutinize completely random parts of the room, was jargon that she _didn't understand_. That was what struck her as odd. That she didn't understand.

Xan was not an overly modest person. But she couldn't be modest _and_ realistic about her talents at the same time, right?

That was what she told herself, secretly. Never aloud. It didn't sound good in conversation. In fact, it tended to halt it.

But it was something the man who was, it was true, _not_ John Smith, told people regularly. He was used to being a genius - all his life he had been one. Except the time that he actually _was _John Smith. Which is not exactly ironic, but it's closer to irony than normal statements are. He was quite used to people following him around in much the same manner as Xan was currently. It was so common that sometimes he actually didn't notice their presence until they had done something really off-kilter.

For some reason, Xan was an undeniable actuality, though, and this really _was_ ironic, because she made the strongest attempts not to be. It was convenient to be in the background, and more comfortable, but she simply wasn't born to be wallpaper. She thought being a nerd, with a Platonically-straight-trending-heavily-towards-asexual orientation would work for this. It did not, but it was what she became comfortable with. The sweet fruits of anonymity come at a price.

People say that there is the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. This is incorrect. The choice is not between knowledge and long life. For one thing, ignorant people die easily in tense situations, because of the simple fact that they are stupid. For another, there was the existence of the man who was not John Smith (except under extenuating circumstances, of course). The trees, if they _have_ to be trees, are those of Security and Reality. Eating both fruits equally produces Apathy, eating neither produces Insanity.

Some people utterly starve themselves of one or the other; for example, some people will eat so much from the Tree of Security that they believe in Trees of Knowledge and Life instead, along with serpents, fig leaves, Heaven, Hell, and metaphorical language from thousands of years in the past. And, granted, the Fruit of Security tastes delicious. But so does the Fruit of Reality, in its own way. Like the difference between an pear and a banana. And somewhere out there, mangoes fit in.

Two people, separated by billions of light-years, hundreds of temporal years, and millions of genetic deviations, can still be very much alike. But that this similarity would come from both having a fascination with fruit is just odd.

Xan chose to favor the Tree of Reality because it just felt more workable than the foreign Security. Then, suddenly, the two fruits had switched overnight. One tasted like the other. Reality now tasted as unreal as Security, and Security suddenly tasted normal.

By the fourth or fifth room, Xan was becoming nervous. By now, someone must have caught on to what they were doing. But she hardly considered turning back. Painful though it was to admit, she knew that without the man and his astonishingly useful gadgetry, she would fall prey to whatever horrors hid in that darkness. And trains. Don't forget trains. She felt that she never would.

"What are you looking for?" Xan decided to ask at last. She hopped from one foot to another, tense as a bowstring. The accuracy of that comparison lies in the fact that when a bowstring is tense, it's _other_ people that get hurt.

There was no response. Or at least, no discernable answer. It wasn't as though the man was saying nothing. He had been talking quietly (and not-so-quietly) to himself the whole time. He spoke the way Xan sometimes thought, and rather than suspecting insanity, she recognized that he was probably using his own brand of science here.

"And note well that I said _you_ and not _we_ because I know perfectly well what I'm looking for," she added.

It occurred to Xan that he might be ignoring her on purpose.

"Why not tell me? We're deep below the prying eyes of the human race in these caverns. We're being watched by walls and wiring and whispers. What's the point of a secret where no one can live long enough to tell it?" Sometimes Xan spoke like this. People tended to ignore the snatches of poetic prose. The man didn't.

"Was that an alliteration I heard there?" he said as he turned, incredulous.

"I'm nervous. I alliterate when I'm nervous. Some people babble. I do too, in meter and measure. My mind fills itself with metaphors. _Because we are about to DIE; were you even LISTENING to me?_"

"So... you think we should move on?" he said, feigning oblivious sincerity. "Fair enough, all these rooms are empty. Safe. Secure. Nothing really very... life-threatening here. You must be bored, I'm sorry." He straightened up, giving her a patronizing look.

Xan composed herself as he passed, this time crumpling anger in her fists rather than terror. She couldn't stay panicked for long around this man. Silly, really. It wasn't as though he was especially reassuring... no, that wasn't true at all. He absolutely radiated confidence, on a subconscious level. She realized he was baiting her so she wouldn't be frightened, just angry. Because I can't panic now. That would be bad... why would it be? Because we are in a lot more danger than even before, and he knows it. But he can make you feel like there's nothing to fear.

"You really are a doctor, aren't you?" Xan said to him absently. For some reason this made him give her an odd, penetrating look. "Even if you don't act like one. You... assume authority, and people give it to you. Because they need something to believe. Need to know that... it won't hurt a bit. You'll get through this. Trust me. They need that. And you know how to give it. Maybe you don't work at a hospital, but... a doctor, still." Xan shrugged, as if this was not important. The man was staring at her, open-mouthed.

The Doctor suddenly beamed. It was dazzling. Xan forgot she had been annoyed at him. Why should she be annoyed? Everything was all right. "Not _a_ doctor," he said, savoring every word. "_The_ Doctor. I knew you'd figure it out, eventually."

"Is it your name?"

"No, but it's as close to one as I need. It's more of a definition. It's what people call me. It's what I chose to be."

"So, back to my previous question, are we _not _about to die? Can you use your special Doctor powers to dispel all evil?" Xan asked a little bit sarcastically.

The Doctor considered this. "Well... yeah," he said as though this was obvious. "But I don't think it would be smart to tempt fate right about n-" It seemed to be an innocent remark, but he had been around long enough to see plenty of drama unfolding. He realized it was a terrible thing to say just before the wall exploded, showering the floor with shattered tiles. Something huge and black and specked with green and sickly purple leapt through, four clawed hands landing on the stricken floor.

"_SAFE? SECURE?_" Xan hurled the words at the Doctor as if they were half-bricks.

He grabbed her arm. "_RUN!_" he screamed, and Xan found that this was quite unnecessary. She had been more terrified out there, in the dark, than in here, but her feet disagreed. They burst into a flurry of action, and the two pelted down the hallway, with the horrific _thing_ snarling and leaping after them.

It could have started off as a human. Something in the face had a human quality, but it had twisted into an inhuman sneer. The nostrils had been widened to such a degree that the rest of the face had crumpled around them. Then the face had been lengthened, and pounded to shape, until the whole thing had a bruise-colored, canine form, but it grinned like a shark. Legs were purely muscle and bone, so much so that the limbs resembled entangled ropes rather than flesh.

It was all teeth and muscle and hunger. But it hardly seemed natural. Every part of it was a deformation, a malaise with claws and the will to kill.

But fast. And powerfully strong. It bunched up its back legs and dove for its prey. The hallway bloomed fourfold before them, and the Doctor hurled himself and Xan down the right passage. The creature, unable to arrest its flight, skidded down the main passage with an unpleasant screech as its claws dragged along the floor. Xan landed, rolled, flipped to her feet so quickly that she blurred, and yanked the Doctor up. She had no idea which way to head, but her feet, numb from movement, hardly hesitated.

Within mere moments, the hound was upon them, its grisly grin parted as it screamed. Fear exploded in Xan's chest faster than flash paper, and suddenly anger swelled in its place. It caught in her throat as she was yanked off balance. The Doctor had pulled her inside a doorway he must have opened and held his screwdriver out in front of him like a gun. There was a high-pitched report, and sparks cascaded from the frame of the sliding door as it slammed shut. The hound had thrust its head inside, and the door hit it like a hammer. It sprang back, yelping, and then vanished from view as the door shut a second time. The edges of the door were glowing red and smoking.

Xan felt that her eyes must be doing the same. She sprang upright (_for_, she thought, _the third time today, godsdammit_). "Lights," she rasped, "Can't see a blasted thing here." Sweat was oozing through her fingers as she pasted back her hair. Another blue glow and whine, and then the ceiling illuminated. There was snarling from the other side of the door and a disturbing sucking noise, like the monster had a severe head cold.

"It's smelling us," she wailed. "How did it come through the wall like that? What is it? It looks _made_, doesn't it?"

"It's trying to smell us, but I don't think it can. That soap threw it off, listen, it's going away. All right, we can't stay here. Got to get moving... think, _think_..." The Doctor was running his hands through his hair so vigorously as he paced that he looked as if he had lice.

"Air vents!" said the two as much the same time. They looked up.

"No, air goes through the walls. System of microtubes, not any large vents," Xan said at last. "Need a weapon. Something. Anything." She scoured the room. It was less empty than the others, but it must have been cleared of anything important because now it resembled a high school or college laboratory in terms of contents. The Doctor joined her in rummaging through the cabinets. There were dishes full of agar, vials full of things like formaldehyde, and some portable Bunsen burners. Xan couldn't think how to use them. She pushed her mind around this and thought harder. The burners would come in handy, and plenty of the materials were flammable... you'd have to be a total oaf not to work that out.

"I have an idea," said Xan, who felt a little crazy. "We catch a swarm of cleaning robots, fill them with ether, detonate them like itty bitty gas canisters. Rig the motion sensors to spray at anything moving. No one can get near us without a gas mask."

"We could-"

"Or this: grab these burettes, break them, hey, look, long sharp poky thing. Instant weapon." She brandished the glass rapier, flipping it over the back of her wrist in one quick twirl.

He stared at her. Outside, there was a grating screech that sounded like a mix between an animal noise and a klaxon.

"Hot-wire the door so it electrocutes anyone who walks in? Make impromptu flamethrowers with the burners? Short-circuit the whole facility with the fuel look I've still got some? Oh hey, a paperclip." She swiped it off the table and stowed it in her pocket. There was a long pause.

The Doctor's eyes went wide. "You... are... _brilliant!_" he breathed, and instantly he was diving for the cabinets, flinging open the doors and staring at the contents. "The fuel! Of course! It's got to be really powerful, some kind of non-conventional reaction taking place..."

He began dumping things in Xan's arms: a vial of fluid, tools, bottles of who knew what - the labels were written in tiny print. "Hang onto that," he was saying, "Let's see... this is all genetic manipulation... and amino acids, look, glutamine, tryptophan, lysine..." Xan tried to empty her arms by placing the items on the table, but they were being refilled as fast as they were emptied.

"What are you doing?"

"Something," responded the Doctor unhelpfully, his answer muffled by the fact that he was holding his sonic screwdriver in his teeth as he worked. He'd fished a pair of square-framed glasses out of his coat pocket and put them on. "What was the paperclip for?" he asked as he pointed his sonic screwdriver at a flask. The contents seethed.

"Oh, I don't know. They just come in handy sometimes. Supersonic science project, is this? What procedure are you using, exactly?"

"_Procedure?_ I'm just improvising! Never needed _procedures_ before... Don't know why people set so much by _plans_ and things. Silly, since you're all so _short_-_lived_..." The Doctor pulled Xan over to the flask he'd been preparing. "Where is it? The fuel?" His voice was lowered and he spoke rapidly. Xan realized she could hear voices. Someone was coming. The creature's wailing was an alarm of some sort. A siren.

"Right here." She also lowered her voice. The vial had been tucked in the pocket of her cargo pants, and she removed it quickly.

"Well, if the fuel is what I think it might be, then... you'll see." He unscrewed the top of the vial and poured the golden liquid into the flask he'd prepared.

"Begging your genius pardon, my brilliant bro, but what if it _isn't_ what you think it is? What then?"

The Doctor snickered. "Then you should hang on to that burette." He carefully placed a few wires into the solution, and stuck a battery on top.

"An electrolytic cell," said Xan. "I took _high school chemistry_, and I know what that is. But it won't make energy, just consume it."

"Ah. _That_ is where the fuel comes in. I think I know why the fuel is so powerful. Or vaguely why, anyway. Not specifically."

"Like with everything else in this whole insane escapade?"

"How droll. I'll need dry ice for that burn, to be sure. You know the difference between nuclear fusion and fission as sources of energy?"

"Again, high school education. Hel-lo-oh?"

"Well fusion isn't fuel-efficient on Earth-"

"Because you have to raise the temperature and pressure high enough but in the sun it's already that hot because nebula gas is ignited by supernovae so it's a virtually self-sustaining system because-supernovae-have-so-much-energy-I-_know_-all-this."

"Thought you were an archeologist. So an astrophysicist, too?"

"I just know a lot about... lots of stuff. Get to the point!" Xan was whispering outright, now. The voices behind the door seemed quite loud.

"The way the fuel makes energy is like the way stars make energy. All sort of backwards, where what you have should _consume_ energy, but the conditions are so that it actually _releases_ it. When you said, on the bus, that you'd have to have something like fusion to generate that much power. That's what got me thinking. So it's like a star. But biological. The biological equivalent of a star."

"That's genius! That's just what I was thinking, but I couldn't place it like that. Of course! But what _is _the biological equivalent of a star?"

Though he knew full well that he was a genius, hearing it from Xan gave the Doctor a pleasant warm feeling in his chest. He put it down to simple adrenaline. "I don't know yet. But if I run electricity through it mixed with the stuff I just made... well, I don't have a word for it, because I invented it just now... then it'll release energy, not absorb it."

"How much energy?"

"Let's find out," he grinned.

They placed the flask, which now had a lump of electronics as a kind of cork, by the door, and at the Doctor's urging, retreated very far into the corner of the room. The cabinets didn't quite reach the wall and left a space where two people could conceivably hide. The two people would have had to know each other quite well, however, or at least be very desperate to hide.

"Why do I always have to share these tiny hiding spaces with you? Why don't you get your _own_ corner?" hissed Xan. It was a very tight fit.

"I would, but there isn't one." The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and turned off the lights with it, then trained it on the flask.

"I'm beginning to suspect that's just a magic wand," said Xan. "Whatever you say to the contrary. Are you a wizard? Can you summon a Patronus with that?"

He laughed quietly. They were so close that Xan could actually feel the laughter against her chest. It did funny things to her thoughts.

"Whoever's come looking for us is certainly taking their time about it," Xan whispered.

"So they probably _have_ heard of me," said the Doctor. Xan laughed this time, if only at the man's expression as he said it.

"If you did have a Patronus..." Xan began.

"Are we back to this again?"

"...would it be a police box?"

In the cramped space, the Doctor couldn't conceal his reaction. Which made him feel that Xan had planned for that. He sat in shocked silence for a few moments, then managed to get out, "No. Why would it be?"

"Oh. Nothing. Just a thought to keep in your mind..."

The lab had a window that was barely visible from the corner of the room, which was probably a good thing. Something man-sized and thankfully bipedal passed in front of it. Xan and the Doctor both froze. Then the Doctor carefully lifted the screwdriver up.

"Wait," Xan hissed, barely audible. She grabbed his arm. "Listen."

A voice could be heard coming from the hallway.

"How do we know it's him?" asked a male voice.

Someone else responded, "Who else could get inside the facility? Who else would think to shut off power? Who else has a _sonic screwdriver_? Don't be ridiculous. He's here."Xan stared at the Doctor in abject astonishment. Her jaw was itching to drop, but she had clamped it shut over the back of her hand. She hadn't actually _believed_ it when he said... _Who are you?_ she thought. Then she realized that the person had assumed that the _Doctor_ had thought to shut off power. Who else would think to... oh, _please_.

"Then why did we send in the Siren Hounds?" asked the first man, who was obviously trying to be quiet because he'd lowered his voice. Xan had sharp ears, though, so tough luck. "Why kill him? We could have had another-"

"Be quiet. We can't risk _that_. And if he finds out about _Ms. Russell_ then _that_ one's no use either."

Xan bit her hand, right through the skin.

She tasted blood. There was a little ring of red marks on her hand now. It was the Doctor's turn to stare at her, ask silently, _Who are you?_ It was reasonable; Xan found herself asking the same question about herself. She listened closely to the two men. _They know that I know about them. So I guess it's too late to back out now. I'm in for good. But what else for, I have no idea whatsoever... that scares me._

"So then, what?"

"We send in the hounds. Why do you think we chose them? They'll root out our foxes."

"Do it, then."

The door burst open and black flesh hurled itself through. There was a scream of rage- Xan couldn't tell whether it came from the Siren Hound, the men outside, the Doctor, or herself. There was also the whine and blue light that came from the sonic screwdriver, and the battery attached to the flask let out one tiny spark.

The nausea from outside the university, from on the train, came back with vengeance, ten times, no, a hundred times stronger. Xan felt like someone had ripped away the soft darkness that frames vision, as though her whole head was one giant eye. A strange, echoing noise rang hollowly in her head.

She finally regained control of her senses, and found, to her embarrassment, that she and the Doctor were locked in a terrified embrace. So he must have felt it too. They tactfully untangled themselves and peered over the edge. The Doctor gasped. So, of course, Xan scrambled to her feet to see what had happened, part of her hoping that no one had died, and part of her wishing, no, praying, that they had.

What she saw didn't seem to be either one.

The Siren Hound, as the men had called it, was frozen in mid-leap, its jaws open wide in a snarl. One deformed paw was touching the ground. The whole thing shimmered, as if seen through waves of heat. The air was ice-cold, though.

The men were frozen in the same way. They seemed like faulty holograms, slowly flickering back and forth between reality and emptiness. One of them Xan recognized - the grey-suited man who had asked her about her work.

"What the hell did you just do, Doctor?"

"I don't know," he wailed. "I don't know!"

"How did you do it?"

"I don't know!"

"Are they dead?"

"I don't know! What did I do?"

"_You freaking froze time, that's what!_"

The Doctor stared at the silhouettes. A tiny smile began to form on his face. "I _did_! Froze time! By myself. I can do that? I can do that!"

"N- No. No, you... can't. Don't... don't do that."

He kept smiling, and now the smile was starting to scare Xan. She stared at his expression, then saw through it instantly. She pulled back her hand and slapped him as hard as she could. Which was very, _very_ hard.

"OW! AUGH! WHY _THE HELL _DID YOU DO THAT?"

"_What if it's permanent?_" Xan snarled. "_What if it kills them?_"

"Oh my GOD you are crazy! That _really_ hurt! OW!" He clutched his face, which he feared might actually bruise. It wasn't as though he hadn't been slapped before - he had, many times. But this wounded him more than normal for some reason. "Why did you do that? We were getting along so nicely! For about thirty seconds, granted, but still!"

Xan couldn't find words for the warning her body had given her. The sudden anger. She didn't know how to explain how she knew that he couldn't be allowed to...

Tiny hairline cracks were forming in midair, and light spilled through. The figures shimmered even more strongly. "See?" she demanded. "See that? That's _definitely bad!_"

"Yes, because they're going to start MOVING AGAIN!" the Doctor shouted. "RUN!"

They did.


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: Apparently I submitted the wrong document for the last chapter! I'm really sorry about that, and I fixed it right away. Apologies to all. And here's a consolation chapter:**

Now imagine a December sidewalk in midday. It's covered in road salt from the promise of a winter storm. There _is_ a storm coming, but it hasn't got anything to do with the weather. There is a pleasant absence of those little black marks from chewing gum; in Europe, Xan had been pleased to find out, there was less litter. There is a subway grille, and lukewarmth is rising from it. Someone is lying on top of it, huddling on the metal.

Guess who it is?

Good job.

Mister Robbie Hoss had very quickly left the grille the... man... had entered. It gave him the creeps, and so he was willing to give up a spot of warmth to someone else to keep away from whatever that man found so interesting. He found another spot in an alleyway deeper into the city. Someone else had been there, but Robbie kicked him out easily. Now he lay on top of it, wrapping his hands around a mug of something warm and maybe even drinkable. There was a logo on the cup, and it said _Waterhelm Industries_.

Suddenly he heard footsteps coming from below him. A blue light and a whine, one he recognized very clearly. He leapt off the grille and squished over to the wall, waiting. A hand pushed the grate up and over- he tried not to let it touch him- and then, yes, a mess of brown hair and sideburns and sharp eyes, and a hand pulling itself up. It rolled out of the hole and then, to Robbie's surprise, it reached down and caught another hand, a smaller one. The girl lifted herself up quite easily with a flex of her muscles, then shoved the grille back into place with her foot. She noticed the homeless man cowering by the wall, and gave him a perplexed look. He seemed to be staring wild-eyed at the girl's companion. Xan jerked a thumb at the Doctor as if to say, _What, him?_

Hoss nodded. He edged away from the Doctor a little more, who was heading out of the alley, pulling Xan with him. She resisted for a moment, a feeling tugging at her in a strange way, then she let him lead her off.

Robbie Hoss retreated further into the alley, thinking hard for the first time since he could remember. He reached inside his coat, which was full of junk, and pulled out a fob watch, running his hands over the strange circular diagrams on the back, shivering.

"Did they follow us?" Xan started to ask. She was feeling strangely faint, and the ground seemed to slide forwards under her feet as she walked.

"They might still be frozen."

"No. I don't think so. It looked like it wasn't going to last. Did you _know_ it was going to do what it did?"

A sudden gust of wind snapped through the Doctor's coat and fled on down the street. The buildings were tall; in this part of London they disappeared into the sky on a cloudy day. They funneled wind through them from off the Thames.

He started to speak, changed his mind, and said disdainfully, "Of course I did."

"None of this was so surprising to you. Did you know the... Siren Hounds were monsters from the start, too?"

His silence was a dead giveaway as to the answer. Xan couldn't hold the accusations in any longer.

"You weren't too surprised to see those creatures down there, were you? Take anyone else on the street, any of those people, show them the thing... it's a nightmare turned real, it's fiction that's been written as fact! Those Siren Hounds were either genetically modified mutants or aliens! Aliens! They could have been from another planet! Aliens! That's... unbelievable! Or mutants, at least! But you... You act as though you see things like that all the time! I think you do! I hear about all the crazy things that have happened in this city, and I'm beginning to see that the tinfoil hat people aren't as wrong as we think! As I thought!"

The Doctor kept trying to get a word in edgewise, but was cut off by Xan's exclamations. He pulled her to a stop and looked around carefully. "Go home," he said quietly. "Just go home. Now. Go back to your life, go back to your world, because if you keep pushing farther, you'll get lost. Forget about tau radiation. Forget about the things in the subways. Because if you don't, you'll wish you had."

"Forget about the men in that place, forget that they said my name, like they were looking for me? Forget about that?"

"Go home! Out of England, back to New York City. Have Christmas with your family, not alone, over here, where there are people looking for you."

"I don't have any family," she said shortly. "I live here now." But uncertainty and doubtful query started to take root in her mind...

This silenced the Doctor for a moment. Then he said, "I don't want to put you in any danger. You know that I know more than I'm saying. I know that too. Why not admit it? But even if you get out of this one alive... there's no going back if you get in too deep. And sometimes that means you end up dead the next time. Or a target, at least."

"I'm already a target. Didn't you hear them? I am already a target; they knew about me... wouldn't it be better if I knew what they know, since I don't see how I can _possibly_ go back to my normal life without taking down the whole company _anyway_..." There was a hint of pain in her words. "So much for your good intentions, Doctor. They've already marked me out for death. Or worse."

"Which is why you should stay away from them! And me!"

She laughed bitterly. "So you're trying to kill me, too?"

"I never _try_ to," he whispered to himself. "But it doesn't make a difference, in the end."

"Why? What does that mean? Who are you?"

"Oh, but you're so clever, you should have figured it out by now, shouldn't you?" He turned around and began to walk away. "This is my job, to handle this kind of thing. Maybe you know that already. But it doesn't have to be _yours_."

"Do you know what I think?"

He did not respond.

"I think you're a time traveler, and the police box is your time machine."

The Doctor whirled around, gaping at the human who was watching him, arms folded across her chest.

"You have the worst poker face ever," Xan said.

"Who are you?" he was suddenly demanding. "Are you from Torchwood? You one of theirs? UNIT? They still around? "

Xan blinked, and her expression contracted with suspicion. "Who're they? What's... I... no, I'm just... from me." Then she realized the implications of this. "It's _true?_"

"You just... figured it out on your own?" he scoffed. "Like I'm supposed to _believe_ that?"

"We..." she tried to articulate, with indignant confusion. "...do that... sometimes. Humans. Humanity. Scientists, especially. Of which... I am one...Well, it isn't like you haven't been dropping really _obvious_ hints all over the place like dirty laundry, though, and, you know, this isn't going to help us fix the problem!" The man's apparent lack of common sense created a bizarre mix of bemusement and anger in Xan's voice. "And you just basically told me I was right! What kind of professional are you?"

The Doctor realized she was right about his poker face, and clamped his mouth shut. Then he slowly stuck his hands in his pockets and examined the girl.

"Xan Russell."

"Yes?"

"You're an archeologist. But you study genetics, too. And history. And chemistry. Astrophysics. Maybe philosophy or poetry as well, anything you can get your hands on. Your lab-mates think you're crazy, and you know it, too. It eats at you, doesn't it?" _You also think you're the cleverest person in this star system, and maybe you are, but only when I'm not in town. And I usually am._

The girl shook her head, disbelievingly, but her eyes were tortured and wet. Fury began to crease her face, but it faded again and was replaced by astonishment as she listened.

"You love to read, probably science fiction. No family. No friends. You spend all your time working at the lab, even over holidays. And you made a point of tracking down any trace of huon energy you could find in the history of this world."

"No, tau radiation. I don't know what huon energy is. What does it have to do with..."

"We call it something different. It's more specific."

"We?" she echoed. A calculating look returned in her eyes.

"You just happen to notice it cropping up all over, do you?"

"All the places you've been?"

That brought him up short. He quickly considered all his options. He could tell her everything, and hope she wasn't working for anyone dangerous. He could lie. He could... Xan put her head to one side, unconcerned.

The Doctor wheeled about and fled.

He got only ten meters before Xan overtook him, catching him around the middle and dragging him back.

"_Not_ so fast," she said calmly. "Wouldn't want you to get away now, would I? Who knows where you'd go? Before I was born? A couple of years after I die?"

He wriggled out of her grip and made it into a side street. Suddenly his route was barred by Xan's arm.

"You could stop me from ever being born. You could erase me from existence!"

He ducked under her arm and was suddenly diving away. "But I wouldn't!" This time he employed some good strategy and Xan was cut off by a mob of people talking and joking. She darted though them like a fish though a shoal, and intercepted the Doctor as he entered the network of alleyways.

"But it isn't working, right? Your time machine? Because you crashed it?" she went on, leaping over a dumpster and blocking the man. "Technical difficulties, huh?"

He feinted right and tried to skirt around her, but Xan moved with lightning speed. "You paid attention to every word I said, didn't you?" the Doctor rejoined. "Took notice of _everything_ I did? Not many people will go that far and far-fetched, you know, even with me. Haven't you got anything better to do - on _Christmas_, no less; _I've_ got a job to do, but _you_ - better to do than following some obscure radiation around the city? That was what made you leave the train, wasn't it? The radiation?" He made another move to escape and, instead of dodging Xan as she blocked him, caught her as she moved and managed to knock her off balance with a swipe of his leg. As she tripped backwards, he caught her easily with one arm.

"D'you know what _I_ think?" the Doctor smirked, having regained the upper hand. The irate Xan virtually dangled from his grip. Her shoes were slipping hopelessly on the cold asphalt. The Doctor leaned closer and said with satisfaction, "I think you're a little bit obsessed with me."

The utter absurdity of this statement as it seemed to Xan was even more effective than tripping her up. Unable to come up with a more eloquent response, she shook her head. "N-no," she stammered. Then, once she'd managed to muster a bit of disgust, she added, "That... doesn't even make any sense."

"It doesn't? Um... why not?" It was hardly the reaction he'd hoped for, or expected.

"Well... it... I don't know! It just doesn't! I don't... think like that. I think?"

"So people say." The Doctor put his head to one side, as if Xan was a curiosity to be studied scientifically.

His remark confused Xan even more. "So _people_ say? About _me_?"

"Uh-huh."

"I'm... _said?_ People... _say_ things about me?"

"Er. Yes. Not that I... went around _asking_ about you or anything..."

"Oh. Okay."

The Doctor took the opportunity to escape, leaving Xan furiously trying to reconcile her view of the world with this new purported reality. Then she realized she was alone. Her quarry was disappearing around a corner, coat billowing behind him as he ran.

The Doctor, as some people noticed, had a habit of running for his life. He had quite a bit of practice. So he was extraordinarily surprised by the fact that he had been overtaken more than once by... well... a _girl_. But this time, he had a good head start, and a certain special advantage. An iron gate blocked the path into the next set of alleys. As he approached it, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and then the gate was unlocked. He dashed through, and shut the gate. Too bad for Xan, he thought, his arm rising to lock the gate. In an instant, he was pulled back against the gate, immobile. His sonic screwdriver flew out of his hand.

She had come from behind, coving nearly three times the distance he did since she gave chase in seconds. Flinging her arms through the spaces between the bars, she grabbed the Doctor by his wrist, her other arm catching him across the chest, right over the breastbone so all the air was knocked out of him. He was horrified to find that he could not break her grip, which was as iron as the bars around him, no matter how hard he strained forward. It was almost embarrassing how easily he'd been caught.

"I think you may have misunderstood my intentions," Xan said amiably through the wrought iron. The Doctor tried to twist around to look at her, but this was patently impossible.

"Well, I didn't think assault was on the agenda!"

"I don't _want _to have to do this," she told him patiently.

"You may not realize it, but I live in a world where those words are never a good sign."

"What world would that be?"

"Which one would you like?"

"I have a choice?"

"No, but I do."

"Oh, for god's sake! Do you think I _want_ to do this? Do you think I enjoy these long passive-aggressive Socratic questioning games? This is ridiculous! And embarrassing. It goes against my very nature. But if you think I'll let you just run off without me getting any answers..." She almost sounded hurt.

"_Passive_-aggressive? Where does _passive_ fit into all this?"

"I ran out of patience!"

"Have you ever considered," asked the Doctor, his words suddenly cut with anger, "that it might be safer for you _not_ to know?

"Yes," said Xan defiantly, although she hadn't really. _Well I would have, if I'd had the time to think about it! So it isn't really a lie._

"Do you see all those people?" hissed the Doctor. "Out on the streets, do you see them? Walking along, without knowing about the things inside the ground beneath them. They don't know, and they never will! And because of that, they won't be hurt, they won't go looking for danger. Why can't you be one of them?"

"I ask myself that every day," she said thickly. "Maybe part of it is that I'm here, looking for an answer."

"Oh? You think you're the only one who's ever noticed 'trends' or 'patterns' or whatever and thought that you could handle the truth? About what the world really is?" Bitterness was rising out of unpleasant memories. "And look at you now, eh? Look at you? Oh, you're just like all the rest of them, you get off the train to find out what's going on because you're _curious_, and then all of a sudden you're running for your life from all the evil _I_ try to protect you people from, and you _like it_! Until something _happens _to you, and it's my fault then! Of course it is!" His voice had risen near a shout, but he composed himself.

Xan considered this, rather callously, and thought that he was not very good at being discreet. Baiting him might be a good way to get information. And something in his tone had touched a nerve for her. _You people_, she repeated to herself. There's more where that came from, too, she thought.

So she said, "Maybe you're right that we're safer not knowing what's real. Because it doesn't seem to have done _you_ any damn good."

The startled look on the man's face as he turned around to stare at her showed that he had never thought about it that way before.

Xan had had enough of this. She kicked open the gate, shot through before the Doctor could run, and grabbed the front of his shirt, shoving him against a wall.

"Whoa! Hey! What're you-"

"Listen. Very. Closely," she told him, and the way she said it in her storyteller's voice made it sound like an omen. Green fury was dancing in her almond-shaped eyes. "You may _think_ that the universe revolves around you and _maybe you're right_. But I will not let this go. I have seen what that place was willing to do to protect its secrets, and if it was so afraid of _you_, particularly, that it would let slip dogs of war in those underground halls that _most certainly_ did not have _any_ intention of showing mercy, if they are willing to _kill_ me or _anyone else_ then I will make every effort to stop them, because they have assumed the right of control over life and death and the fabric of time as a mere _corporate_ _entity_, which I will not accept, and _furthermore_," she whispered, her fist pressing into the Doctor's Adam's apple, "you have no authority over me unless you _reveal_ it, which you have not done, so _I will do what I must as a citizen of this planet and you will not stop me! _Do you _understand?_"

The Doctor, who had been gaping at her, slowly shut his mouth. He said nothing at first, simply met Xan's gaze steadily. She refused to look away, even though a feeling akin to nausea was rising in her chest because of it. It made her feel exposed and uncomfortable, as if her soul was being examined, but this only made her angrier. Her gaze focused the anger like a magnifying glass until it could ignite dry leaves.

"What was that you said," he whispered finally, "about the fabric of time?"

"I mean that I got on that train at about twelve-thirty. I wandered around in the subways for an hour or more, walked through that facility for maybe half an hour, and after all that time, it's just about noon right now." She pointed up at the sky. "I mean that I was outside the university yesterday and I felt... it was really unpleasant," she said, shuddering. "I can't even describe it, but that was around noon, and twenty minutes later it was four-thirty. No one noticed. But... something isn't right, I can _feel_ it!"

The man looked shocked. Then he took a deep breath. "Listen, why don't you let me go, and I'll tell you everything? I promise. No more running away."

Xan considered this proposal. "Why _did _you?"

"Oh. Habit."

She released him. He rubbed his shoulders, wincing, and picked up the sonic screwdriver.

"What do you want to know?" the Doctor asked. "The meaning of life?"

"Is time travel possible?"

He smiled. "Of course not."

She rolled her eyes. "Is it possible for a large animal to be suspended in midair? Because I know I saw that."

"Couldn't have been an optical illusion, then? A trick of the eye? _Trompe l'oeil_, as they say in France."

"They may say that in France, but I've never heard of aliens invading their country. Here, things are a bit different."

"Hah! You'd be surprised."

"Of course. What am I thinking? The dresser. So you _have_ met..."

The Doctor gave Xan a sheepish little smile and stood with his thumbs in his pockets.

"So," she said.

He stuck out his hand. "Nice to meet you."

She extracted her own from the crook of her arm, where she'd stuck it to keep warm. They shook hands gingerly. It was another delicate truce.

"To whom do I owe the pleasure?" asked Xan. Her message was clear.

"I'm the Doctor. _Just_ the Doctor," he said as she started to protest. "That's what I'm always called, both by strangers and by the people who know me well. It's more or less my name, and it says who I am."

Xan was surprised at how well-spoken he was. She began to revise her mental profile of him.

"And yes, I am a time traveler. I'm amazed how quickly you figured that out. I usually would just tell anyone who wants to know, but you... well, you handle information differently from other people. I can see that."

They slowly made their way out of the alley. "How _do_ I handle information?" Xan asked him.

"Well, for one thing, you take the time to figure out what it actually _means_," he responded. "Most people just... adjust to the idea. Just another thing they don't understand. You're not like that. I don't want to overload your sense of reality. Not yet."

"It's pretty much gone by now." They stepped out into the street once more. "So now let's get back to the fuel and this whole temporal mess."

As if this was a cue, the Doctor's more serious expression vanished, and he began to speak rapidly, playfully. "Ah. Yes. Right. Brilliant! Unfortunately, we don't have any of the fuel left, so that's no good, eh? Got used up, didn't it? But obviously it does something to the _fabric of time_," and he said those three words loftily, and plucked at his greatcoat with a wink thrown Xan's way, "I can't believe the ideas people here latch on to, you have such funny ways of talking about time: it's a line... no, it's an arrow, 'cos it flies-"

"Flees."

"Sorry?"

"_Tempus fugit_ means 'time flees,' not 'time flies.' People always get that wrong."

The Doctor noted the way she said the Latin words. _TAYM-poos FOO-geet_, rather than _TEHM-puhs FYU-jit. _She had not Anglicized them, so they sounded exotic. "But you say it flies, too... flees, flies, hey, I do both, all the time... you always want more of it, but you don't want to _take_ it, and then you waste it, sometimes you _kill_ it - ugh - or spend it... or bide it, or... you say that it waits for no man..." He gave Xan a nudge. "Can't really say that's true anymore, can you? 'Cos it sure waited for me 'n you. Well," he sniffed, "_mostly_ me..."

Xan rolled her eyes. "And we're trying to find out _why_," she reminded him. "You don't use anything like that fuel in your time machine, do you?"

The Doctor shushed her. "Go ahead and tell the world, why don't you?"

This annoyed her because she knew she had been speaking very quietly, because she did understand the idea of discretion. "In your, ahem, _car_?"

"No. Well... yes. Not exactly. It runs on huon energy, which is a very rare type of tau wave, I suppose... but huon energy doesn't really relate to the time travel as much as it's... like... _food_ for it..." He trailed off.

"So you've never encountered anything like that fuel before?"

"No. I really haven't. Not as far as I can remember. And that means a _lot_, because it's multiplied by about nine hundred and... oh, _balls_, did I just do it again?"

"What did you do?" Xan giggled.

"That thing where I hint at all this stuff you're not supposed to know?"

"Hmm. You may have. But I'll let this one slide."

"Do I expect you all to be sheep or something? I have to stop doing that. It's what got me stuck with you."

"I'm flattered. Why not just tell me everything? It'll save you the trouble, and then we can _both _laugh at your no doubt hilarious witticisms."

The Doctor said the first response that came to mind. "Spoilers?"

"Oh, give me a break... that's just..."

"Incredibly irritating? And snide? Yeah. Believe it. But you know when it's really annoying, is when they rub it in, you know?"

"Not really..."

"Well. So, imagine you were in some kind of life or death situation, and you're working your fingers to the _bone_ - which is another 'hilarious witticism,' so you _are_ permitted to laugh, even if you haven't a clue what I'm on about..."

Xan laughed anyway, and they strolled through the chilly streets of London, talking as if they'd known each other for a long time, or at least quite a bit longer than two days with two chaotic and relatively brief encounters.

**AN: The scene doesn't end there, but it goes on longer and I wanted all my chapters to be _around_ the same length.**


	12. Chapter 12

"We need to get to my lab," Xan cut in at last, before the Doctor could launch into another story. "Did I tell you that the university I work at is owned by Waterhelm?"

"This'd be the company trying to kill us?"

She nodded.

"No!" he said indignantly. "You didn't! Why'd you wait until now?"

"I think I forgot."

"You just _forgot_ to mention that?"

"My point is, they probably got someone there to work out any technical difficulties, or design plans, or so on. Why else would they fund the university, but to get scientists to work on their evil schemes, or whatever? One of which includes the fuel somewhere, another of which includes the Siren Hounds. They looked... _made_ to me. Evolution didn't make them. Someone sitting at a desk did, splicing DNA and cloning cells... they were pretty uncouth, but I think they were... cultured."

"Was that a pun?"

"Oh yes. Awful, wasn't it?"

"Not many people would have caught that one, but it was pretty bad."

"I like words, that's all. But you understand what I'm saying, right?"

"You think the Siren Hounds have been genetically modified... or generated... by someone at your lab?"

"At Avalon, yes."

"_Avalon?_ Avalon _University? _Founded in 2017? With the most prestigious scientific research program in Europe?"

"Yeah, that one."

"Never heard of it."

"If you like. You know, something tells me it wouldn't be a good idea to use public transportation right now." The Doctor had paused at a subway entrance as if about to enter.

"What's that, then?" He had a feeling it would not be good at all.

"Remember how the train tried to..." she drew a line threw her neck, then realized this was probably not accurate and tried instead to articulate something being flattened. The Doctor bit his lip and tried not to laugh.

"My point..." Xan gathered herself and repeated, "My _point_ is: the trains are... created - not just run or owned, okay - _created_ by Waterhelm. They... they make them, manufacture them. Probably the busses, too. And they must have been planning something for a long time. They know everything about us! Know my name, your..." she curled quotes around the next word with her fingers, " 'name,' they probably have my picture... oh gods, they run the transit systems, so they have my metro card ID'd... they probably know where I _live_! Argh!" Xan, who had up until now focused on more exotic evils, was beginning to realize just how difficult Waterhelm could make her life.

"Don't panic. Panic is _very_ _bad_. Do _not_ panic."

"I am _not_ panicking, I am simply stating the facts, as they are: uncensored, explicit _facts._ Waterhelm is a _corporation_, it'll be able to do whatever it wants to me; I'm an American citizen."

"What does that have to anything? We're in the UK."

"Yeah, but... in America there's no... no regulation, nothing. The government's just a network of corporations. Don't you know that? They control my health insurance, my passport, my... job. Especially my job. The one I worked _very_ hard to get, because I couldn't _bear_ to work in the US, couldn't bear to _live_ there, even though it's my _home_..."

"All right. _First_, you do not need _health_ insurance with _me_, okay? I'm not called the _Doctor_ because I'm a doctorate in art history or basket-weaving or something. Well, I actually am, for both of them, but that's not relevant. You know, I could probably have kept you alive even if the train _had_ run over you. Not for very long, maybe a few days, but, for a smear of gore, that's pretty good. Second, you do not need a _passport_ with me, 'cos, hey, I get along fine going wherever I want without one. Third of all, you don't need a job with me, 'cos they just take up time and ask silly questions. Fourth... do we need four things? Let's stick to those three. I think they're pretty solid, don't you?"

"The key phrases there are 'with me,' I think." Xan only said it because she knew she had to. It would be wrong to actually let him know she was reassured.

"And when we're done, Waterhelm will not exist. _Count_ on that. So you're not stuck with me for long."

"Long enough to go all the way to Avalon _by foot_. And I'm embarrassed to say I wouldn't be able to find my way. Well," she amended before the Doctor could offer his services, "no, I think I could..." She tried to visualize the map of the streets of London. It was posted on the subways, so she'd seen it often enough. She had never taken the time to examine it closely, but she found that she had a very sharp memory for maps. "I could!" she exclaimed. "I've got the map in my head. I probably wouldn't go the best way, but I could get there." She was a picture of furrow-browed concentration. "I didn't really know I could do that," she commented, and slipped back into a more genteel manner easily. "Call it a latent talent if you like. I'm sure you know a quicker route, though, and time _is_ of the essence."

"Yeah, see, that's another one of those things you hu- people say about time," pointed out the Doctor. "This way's quickest, I think."

"I know. That's why I said it. And it's true in more ways than one, so it's a bit of a play on words."

"You never say anything by accident, do you?" It was an astute observation. Xan knew it was true, because she'd realized it before.

"I try not to." Only partially true. She could be brusque and impulsive, but only if the mood struck her, and then she made the choice to be that way. She tailored her words to seem most rude and irascible when she was feeling out of sorts, or wanted to be alone, and she could be as kind and gentle as she needed when she decided to be kind and gentle. Somehow, the more she honed this skill, the less natural she felt able to be.

Across the street, a pair of passing pedestrians spotted Xan and the Doctor. When the man and woman rushed up to Xan, she realized they must have been calling to her, but she hadn't picked it out from the noise.

Puzzled, she threw the Doctor a look. It said, _I don't know these people. Do you?_ But they addressed her, not him.

"We didn't know what had happened to you!" the small woman burst out. She had a motherly look about her, and was fixing a monstrous mound of light red hair, as it had clearly fallen out of place when they crossed the street.

Rather than making some comment that revealed a level of ignorance, Xan silently urged the pair to continue with a quizzical look.

"When you left the train, and it..."

"Left me?" she finished wryly. Xan thought she recognized the two now. They had been in the subway car. In retrospect, she realized that most of the people in her car would have been aware that she was left behind.

"We were so _worried_," continued the woman, as she wrestled with her hair. "My husband went straight to the emergency phone and tried to tell them about it, didn't you, Roger?"

Roger the husband nodded seriously. "It's an absolute disgrace, you know that? They wouldn't hear a word about it! I told them how you were out of the train, and they left anyway! You were stuck in the tunnels, and they wouldn't hear one more word!"

Xan, who felt more than a little lightheaded at the concern the community had for her well-being, tried a smile and told them sheepishly, "It probably was a bad idea to leave the train, though. I just panicked."

"But that's no excuse at all!" the woman insisted, her hair nodding enthusiastically. "We were all panicking, and you were the only one who did anything about it! You should take this to court, you could have _died_ down there!"

"That's a little melodram-" began the man called Roger.

"Oh, don't be like that, Roger, it's _true_. What if a train had run her over, then?"

The Doctor studied the sky modestly.

"Or she'd been bitten by a rat and gotten that awful _foaming_ disease; what if she'd gotten rabies, Roger, or _pneumonia_?"

"You don't get that from rats, Cecilia, you get it from the cold-"

"_Exactly_, and who knows what the air's like down there?" She rounded on Xan, who was feeling quite pampered. "You should have the law on whoever runs those trains, they've got no sense of public safety!"

"Oh, I _am_," Xan reassured the woman. "Right now, isn't that right, Doctor?"

He played along magnificently. "Yes. Right now."

"This is my lawyer," Xan went on. "Doctor John Smith. We're going to start putting together a case right now, right?"

The Doctor was impressed by the ease at which she spoke. "Right," he agreed, poker-faced.

The woman and her hair seemed to have been appeased. She let the Doctor drag Xan away. He was afraid that the woman would offer Xan tea. She looked exactly the type to do that. When they rounded a corner and were out of earshot of the concerned citizens, the Doctor turned to Xan.

"So I'm your brief?" he asked incredulously. "Where did you think of that?"

Xan considered the image of the Doctor in court, and had to suppress a laugh that would have split her sides. "Why not?" she responded, deadpan.

"Looks like you're a favorite around here."

She shrugged, smiled, and looked back at the crowd of people roaming the streets. Silver slivers of glass twinkled all around her as a single mirror shattered in her mind, a prison now a prism in the dark. The pieces pooled together like mercury and evaporated in the sunlight.

"We need some kind of plan," said Xan. "Well thought-out. High chance of success. That kind."

"You mean like a _strategy_? Since when?" It was as though she'd suggested that they rob a bank.

"For example, how exactly are we going to get you inside the laboratory? Or the university? You need an ID."

"No problem." He procured a black wallet and flipped it open.

"That's a blank piece of paper."

"No it isn't!" He appeared to concentrate. The paper stayed blank. "Can't you see the ID?"

Xan wore a sardonic smile. "I must not be looking hard enough."

"You sure it's blank?"

"Yes. I'm very sure it's blank."

"Can't see anything?"

"I can see a piece of white paper."

"It doesn't seem like it _should_ have something on it, though?"

"It _seems _like it should have something on it. It _should_ have something on it. But... it doesn't."

The Doctor flapped the wallet by his ear, then examined it closely, turning it over and over as if it were a confusing map. Then he stuffed it back in his shirt. As he did so, Xan asked, "Is it some kind of really pathetic magic trick?" The look she received in return was scathing.

"It's not the paper," he told her. "Paper works fine. It's _you_. Some people's minds are immune to psychic deception. Like William Shakespeare."

"You're just making stuff up now," Xan declared.

He gestured to the effect of ambivalence. "You'll see."

* * *

><p>Below London<p>

December 23rd, 2021

"You have no doubt?" The speaker clearly did not believe that this could be the case, and, if so, much time and money had been wasted.

"I have no doubts, but even if I had only the smallest suspicion that this was the case, I would advocate for action."

The conference room was filled with chilly light. There were six men seated along the table. Only two of them seemed to be paying any attention at all to the proceedings.

"You've raised quite a hue and cry over this break-in," yawned a corpulent man whose tie alone cost more than a house. It was an ugly shade of yellow, and had a disconnected, rambling pattern that looked like peeling paint.

The man he addressed opened a briefcase and set a small sheaf of papers on the table. His neighbor gingerly selected the top sheet. It lifted up a stack of about ten pages, having been stapled together. It was a research paper on epigenetic restorative techniques, and the author's name was AlexandraRussell.

"Why exactly is this important?" droned the man with the yellow-wallpaper tie.

"Read the applications."

"Do we really have to sift through this woman's drivel?" spat out another executive with sour lips. She snatched it away from the man who was reading it. The man took another copy from the stack and flipped to the second page insolently.

"What does it talk about?" asked the man with the briefcase. "What applications does it discuss?"

The man and woman both read the last few pages of the report.

"Now tell me if I'm wrong, but our sources have indicated that this particular phenomenon is common. A relegation of the most incompatible ideas from the past to hobbies, to diaries, to research projects. Even dreams. Obsessions with that which is, perhaps, familiar but inaccessible to memory."

"What are you suggesting?"

"What else but the obvious? She must be our missing subject. And if she was here when there was that unfortunate security breach, then she has found the primary article."

"But we have no evidence to show that the-"

"Actually, we have." The speaker came from the doorway. It was the grey-suited man. All heads turned to him. The two men who had appeared most worried stood up. "Conclusive evidence exists to indicate a possible return. I have just found out, from, you might say, the horse's mouth."

"How can you know it isn't lying? It said before that the article was dead."

"Oh, I didn't _ask_ it. Bring it to full consciousness? You know what nearly happened before. Why not just swallow cyanide and be done with it? That's faster, and probably less painful. And why bother _asking_ someone for information when you can just _take_ it from them? Or let them give it to you? And anyway, you know full well that they don't die easy."

"So what did you find?"

A clear cel sheet was thrown across the faux wood. It was dimly recognizable as a readout of vital signs, or possibly a brain map. It was duly examined.

"Explain to me what that's supposed to mean," said one of the businessmen, bored. The grey-suited man, rather than offering an explanation personally, gestured to another man who did not look very comfortable standing in the doorway outside the dim office, who was wearing the white frock of a scientist and a slightly askew expression. Almost dreamily, he walked forward and pointed at the cel, speaking in a monotone.

"High levels of proteins AGS-15, PSRQ-one-ninety-eight, elevated heart rates, advanced cortical activity in the hypothalamus, hippocampus, in unnamed brain regions designated VY-delta and XR-gamma, possibly associated with psionic projections..."

Or at least something along that vein. It all meant very little to the men who were seated around the table. The scientist nervously summarized (although to use the word 'summarized' is an abuse of the English language) the contents of the sheet and waited, as if unwilling to explain further.

"So, what did you tell me? What does this all mean?" asked the crisp, grey man, as crisply and greyly as humanly possible. The scientist tried to collect himself. Something had clearly spooked him quite a bit.

"We thought that these signals indicated... animosity. Anger. Pain. But, with these signals, these psionic projections... possibly a cry for help."

"For _help_? Are we talking about the same...?"

"We do know that the individuals are linked somehow," insisted the grey man. "The subject's brain shows activity in the areas we associate with that link..."

"So it could be reaching out to the missing subject, then."

"It hasn't even learned of her existence yet. Nor would it be able to, in its state... Besides, if you were him... it... in its position, knowing very little for certain but... what's the one thing it could never forget? The person it would recognize? The one place it would look to for help... for mercy?"

"Mercy? From _him_?" This new voice came from deepest shadow of the room, and it sounded strangled and hoarse, like someone choking on sandpaper. The white-frocked scientist fled in terror. Unconcerned, the grey man turned towards the voice.

"Apparently so," he told it wearily, as though he had heard all this before. "They look after their own. That didn't include you. Were you able to track them down?"

"No," snapped the thing sulkily.

"So go away and find them," returned the man with the ugly tie.

"And please refrain from showing yourself to our staff," added the man with the briefcase. "They don't respond well to that."

Once the creature was gone, the grey man shut the door. "I have a plan," he said softly. "Why not take advantage of the situation? We can reclaim the missing item, eliminate two major threats, and get access to all the power the universe has locked away from us. Do you want to know how?"

Most everyone in the room did.

The voices could barely be heard outside of the room, even when, at one point, an argument broke out and the voices grew in volume. All the sound was trapped deep underground, where the secrets stayed kept. The trains passing overhead scattered the noise, except the quietest, most undetectable waves of energy. With a bandwidth of about a tenth of an angstrom, the sound had a higher pitch than gamma rays, and more than a thousand times the energy. If it had been composed of normal particles, it would shatter steel, but its composition was quite a few shades darker than normal. As was its point of origin. As was its meaning. And if it were, in fact, stellar in nature, it would be like the heartbeat of a pulsar, a star collapsed in on itself, a consuming darkness from which nothing escapes but the rarest noises, released, in this case, in staccato tetrads. The noise was not a cry for help. It was far beyond that. It was the sound of someone silently screaming the only word they knew, asking desperately: _Am I alone?_


	13. Chapter 13

**AN: All right, here's a shortish chapter (because I had to break up the uni scene somehow) that introduces two minor characters that are also OC's, and sees things from their point of view. It's more humor than anything else. **

**NEWSFLASH! Falling Star has a TITLE PAGE! So go to my profile - that's where the link is - to check it out! It's just pencil (that's about the limits of my artistic talent), but it's pretty good, it took me a while, and now you get to see what I think Xan looks like.**

Avalon University

December 23th, 2021

Despite it being Christmas break, and despite what the woman on the bus had implied, many of the scientists were working in the laboratory. There had been a sudden rush of demands from Higher Up; projects that needed to be completed, reports to file, files to report, and so on and so forth. Not only was Christmas around the corner, but so was the new year, and that meant (one assumed) that there would have to be an annual report made, and the lab's budget and funding recalculated. Scientists working at Avalon tended not to be the type to be very fascinated with things like budgets, except the numbers that comprised them.

Long gone were the days when one had the luxury of mail that took a few days to reach its recipient, and the days when the office bureaucracy that inevitably develops when businessmen take control allows for excuses and lost papers and general untidiness of notification.

The yellow-haired man who had fooled around with the cleaning bots had received an email from a Waterhelm executive that was cryptic to say the least. It described a task for him that MUST BE COMPLETED BEFORE DEC. 25 and involved the properties of a purely hypothetical type of radiation and its effects on another purely hypothetical type of particle that seemed to relate to matter's interaction with the fourth dimension. It had been disguised as another scientist's paper, but all the people working at Avalon were quite intelligent, even for geniuses. They were all fairly green, too, and had the suspicious minds of young adults competing for top positions and research and access to information. The email had clearly been sent by Waterhelm.

Warren Aang had yellow hair and a matching complexion, so at times looked strikingly like a banana. He studied particle physics and astrophysics, which explained the subject of the email. He sat in the lab with his friend-slash-friendly-rival Colin Montague, who was as ginger as the Doctor could ever hope to be but nowhere near as tall. Colin had also received a strange, conceptualized email a few weeks before, concerning a series of genetic modifications for a hypothetical genome. Since neither assignment needed to involve actual lab materials, the two sat together on the windowsill, which was pleasantly warm from the radiator underneath, throwing ideas off one another.

"Could it be possible for the particles to be a species of meson?"

"Nah. They're probably dark matter of some kind. We hardly know what any of that is."

"Right, right. Hey, maybe it's more got to do with quantum."

"'S _always_ got to do with quantum..."

"Quantum entanglement, but on a temporal level, you know?"

Colin straightened up very quickly. "Connected to themselves or others?"

"Can't be themselves, you'd be facing all kinds of paradox everywhere you look."

"Either way, though, right?"

"Well, it _is_ hypothetical..." They both settled down again.

Colin turned his iPad around so Warren could look at it. "What kind of freak protein's that?" asked the man. Warren shrugged. Colin tried to explain. "It isn't translatable. Se how it's set off by MET, here, so it starts reading okay, but it's only a little way in you get this, here, and that's a stop codon, and then there's all this..." he flicked through a long sequence, "...and here's another stop codon, right here."

"Yeah?"

"So it starts reading here, and then it stops here, and then all this happens, and then it says stop again. None of _this_ gets translated into amino acids, because it already stopped all the way back here."

"Is it a mistake?"

"Well if it is, I didn't make it." He placed his thumb and forefinger on the pad and pinched them together; the display zoomed out to show whole sequences, and then histones, and then clumped together to become a file that was one of a few scattered around the screen. Colin flicked the file into a folder, and began to study the next one.

There was the sound of voices approaching the door. One American female, one British male. The woman was speaking with her skeptic turned all the way up.

"All right, so I'll accept _for now_ that the paper can override an optical scanner. That's _potentially_ believable... If there were some very delicate electronics behind the paper, I could see that. It makes _some_ kind of sense. But the _security_ _guard_..."

"I told you, it's psychic paper."

"You can't just _override_ someone's mind."

"You'd be surprised how often you do it to yourselves."

The door swished open and, unable to agree on courteousness, two people walked in side by side. Colin and Warren had already recognized Xan's voice, but the man she was with was new, and the strange thing was, they seemed to be holding a conversation.

"Check it out," hissed Colin. "Xan's got a _date_."

"'Course she hasn't," Warren said. "Look at them. Do they _look_ like a couple?"

They watched.

"Somehow I knew you were going to say that," Xan was responding, unimpressed. "But that's all internal. You can't _remotely_ override someone's mind. For one thing, everyone's brain chemistry is unique."

The man was smug. "That's why it works. It lets you make up whatever you expect to see."

"Yeah, but, see, she _does_ look interested," Colin insisted. "See, she's checking him out, look..."

"But a brain is totally encased in the skull," Xan pointed out, holding up a hand. "And for good reason. It's so that the neurochemistry doesn't interact with the outside. And it doesn't."

"Yeah, checking out his brain.," whispered Colin, jabbing his friend. "Wouldn't _she_ like to interact with his neurochemistry...?" The two snickered at this.

"Aha! Then how do you see?" countered Xan's acquaintance triumphantly. "Or hear? Or feel?"

Xan's eyes narrowed, becoming increasingly vulpine. "So it's sensory input? Is it also sonic, or something like it? Does it...?"

Warren sat back against the radiator. "The only reason why she's listening to him is that he _knows_ something she doesn't," he said dismissively, waving a hand. "Do you think she'd _bother_ otherwise?"

Colin huffed and picked up his pad. "Bad news for her, then. She can't have _that_ happening, someone walking around who knows more'n she does, can she? Ruin her image, that would."

"Well, _you've_ got something on her, with that project of yours."

"Yeah," said Colin savagely. "They didn't ask her, did they? Sent it to me."

Xan seemed to be coming to a decision. "We'll just ask them," she said. Then she lowered her voice and added, "And try not to drop _really_ obvious hints, all right?" The man gave her a look: _Who, me?_

They had the quiet authority of inspectors as they began to pull people aside and ask questions. Or, at least, Xan did; she commanded respect in any academic field because, no matter how obscure the topic, she could always cut in, speaking with intensely focused amity and fluency, with a spice of jargon, a few bits of truly original ideas, and a reference from a book. The Doctor, on the other hand, let his words fly all over the place, in a stream of consciousness that probably had significance to him, but not to anyone else, so there was no chance of deception, because no one could work out what they should or should not say, or what the man's motives could possibly be.

A woman working at a computer might suddenly hear a voice behind her saying, with all seriousness, "This is about the phonemic radiation from South Africa, isn't it?" and she would turn around to see Xan's light-and-shadow features, with halo of brown hair around her head that had disentangled itself from her braid.

"Yes, I'm tracking the spread specifically with the Native American language diversity, because they don't really fit in with the basic theory..."

"I've always thought that," Xan told the woman, quite truthfully, "Do you know of any recent projects on, say, genetic manipulation or biofuel, maybe commissioned by Waterhelm?"

"I don't think so," a man informed the Doctor. "I don't work on that."

"Do you know what tau radiation is, then?"

"No."

"Anything about temporal distortions?"

"No."

"Genetics?"

"No."

"Any weird patterns in history?"

"No."

"Er... what do you study, then?"

"Cave paintings."

"Just them?"

"Yes. Just them."

"See any good pictures of me lately?"

"In a cave?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?"

"There was this one..." the man began.

"And it looked like me?"

"Yes."

"Was there a blue box?"

"They didn't have blue pigment in the Paleolithic Age. You need indigo or lapis for that."

"Any color box?"

"There might have been."

"That's ridiculous. I've never been to the Paleolithic Age. What on earth are you suggesting? That I can just go to the Paleolithic Age? Just like that?"

"I'm not suggesting anything."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are. What kind of scientist are you?"

"I'm technically an art historian."

"Really? So am I. I have a degree in art history. And basket-weaving. Did you know that?"

"No."

"Probably would have figured me out to be a medical type, or a physicist, or a chemist, right? Of course you did."

"I don't think-"

"You people are always so naive."

On the other side of the room, Xan was talking to a man who was carrying out a delicate lab procedure. He was trying to shoo her away.

"I didn't have anything to do with it," he insisted. "It was someone else. I just do the reports."

Xan fished around and pulled on a pair of goggles and a lab coat. She re-addressed the man.

"Can I help you with anything?" he asked, mysteriously and unexpectedly cordial.

"Did you get a contract from Waterhelm recently?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"What about?"

"They gave me a brain scan yesterday, and asked me to interpret it."

"Huh. Can I see it?"

"The scan?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

"Once I was done with it, they took it back. And then my computer got a virus, so everything was erased. Bad luck, eh?"

"Hm. Very bad luck, yes. What did you make of the scan? What _did_ it mean?"

"Well, it was weird. It wasn't even human. I thought, dolphin, because it clearly was intelligent, and had some way of emitting high-pitched noise."

"So like echolocation."

"That's the one. And it had a few other funny parts to it. I told them it was emitting a distress signal, 'cause that's what it looked like."

"Oh, well. That's probably just the usual inhumane torturing of animals in the name of science. Thanks anyway."

"No problem."

The Doctor, meanwhile, was engaging in what Xan aptly named 'a long passive-aggressive Socratic questioning game' with Colin Montague, who had decided for reasons of his own that this strange man was a threat because of his relations with Xan. A spy, perhaps, from the enemy camp.

"So, wait, you got this email a week ago?"

"Yes."

"From Waterhelm?"

"Maybe."

"Did they or didn't they send it?" "Probably."

"Why are you people always so laconic? Is that what science does to you?"

"I don't really know." Colin was giving the Doctor a strange look. It was attempting to be calculating, but somewhere in there it missed the mark.

"Okay, then. The email. What was it about?"

Some edge to the voice made the request hard to refuse. The Doctor was reluctantly handed an iPad. With a pleased noise, he promptly began to reconstruct a genomic pattern with a speed that left Colin quite disconcerted.

"Ah! This is clever! And you had it all put together before? Most of it? Simple enough... all right... but there isn't much left of this... Oh, look, that's just shoddy, take a look at that pairing..." Swiftly, a group of letters was rearranged.

"So. Um."

"Yes?" The Doctor contrived to look very busy. Working over an iPad didn't quite merit the donning of his square-framed glasses, which he wore simply to appear intelligent, and this disappointed the Doctor, because he found that he was less likely to be bothered bespectacled than not.

The man seemed uncomfortable with the question he was about to ask. He looked over his shoulder for some support from Warren, and found that he was talking eagerly to Xan, who was no doubt nonplussed by his enthusiasm. This betrayal made Colin bold.

"So you know Xan?"

"Clearly, yes." A particular set of genes was giving the Doctor trouble, and this was not a feeling he well knew, so he found himself being a little curt.

Colin stole another glance at Warren, and looked back at the Doctor.

"So you two are friends? Friendly?"

"Not exactly."

"Oh. OH. I see."

"Honestly, I hardly know her."

"Oh." Colin didn't realize that the Doctor was slowly edging himself closer to Warren and Xan, and Xan appeared to be doing the same with Colin and the Doctor. The two conversations began to intermingle.

"She's a bit of a loner, right?" Colin.

"So I've been told." The Doctor. He took out what appeared to be a flash drive and surreptitiously began to download the data.

"How did you meet him?" Warren.

"Look, what I _actually_ want to know about it the research you've been doing." Xan, trying desperately not to let an edge of annoyance creep into her voice.

"So you don't know what animal or thing this genome modified?" The Doctor.

"Sorry. I was just... nothing... nothing..." Warren, looking quite ashamed.

"No. I don't know. So you two are working on something together, then?" Colin.

"You had the idea of quantum temporal entanglement?" Xan. She looked impressed.

The Doctor did too. "So early in history? Remarkable!"

"Wait. What are you talking about?" Colin.

"Quantum temporal entanglement. It isn't so far off the mark, either."

"I wonder, though..." began Xan, a few feet away with her back turned.

"What?" The Doctor, as it seemed to Colin, was talking to thin air.

"Well, a couple of things. Was it planned or coincidence?"

"What was?" asked Warren, utterly lost (as usual).

"The similarities in the conversation threads?" posited the Doctor.

"Right. Absolutely."

"What did I say? Who are you talking to?"

"Absolutely what? Who's right?"

"Me," answered Xan, to Colin.

"Me," said the Doctor at the same time, to Warren.

"Let's leave," proposed Xan.

"Good idea."

In one choreographed maneuver, they returned the iPads to their owners with flips of their wrists, and withdrew, bowing slightly in the direction of the scientists. Both young men sat, unsure of what had just happened, as the pair walked out, trying not to laugh. As the voices Dopplered away, Colin heard Xan ask, inevitably, "So, how does quantum temporal entanglement work, exactly?"

"There she goes again," muttered Colin. "Think she'll have _your_ job by the new year, or is it too low for her?"

Warren looked a little dazed. Then he turned to Colin and asked wistfully, "Do you think he might be a relative of hers?"

"They just met," Colin informed him absently.

"Oh. Wonderful." Warren pulled the iPad closer and started to type ferociously.

"So how long do you think it'll take for her to suck him dry?"

"What?"

"Of knowledge. She's like a fact vampire. Takes everything and makes it _hers._"

"Did you notice the way she looked at him?"

"She didn't. Not that much."

"Out of the corner of her eye," Warren said bitterly. "Every time. Never directly."

"Ha! So you admit that I'm right, do you?" Then Colin caught something in Warren's tone and twisted to stare at him.

"What?" Warren finally asked, sullenly. He paused and glanced up. "Why are you looking at me...?"

"You've gone over to _her _side, haven't you?" said Colin. "Traitor. "


	14. Chapter 14

**AN: This chapter gets a bit technical with the genetics. I think it's cool, but you might be a bit overwhelmed. If you like reading sciencey stuff, then you'll enjoy this chapter, but the thing is, it's not **_**all**_** true-blue technobabble. There's more than a little grounding in real science, so it's not just technical terms pulled out of my head. It's still speculative, though. Most of this can't actually happen yet.**

Xan directed the Doctor to a spare lab room in the wing. "Sometimes I come here to work," she said, unlocking the door, "Although it doesn't always have all the equipment I need. I don't actually have a high enough position to _own_ an office, but no one comes in here. There's good equipment here that wasn't taken out." She inserted a key in the wall. "It's old, too. You have to have a key to turn on the gas and the power and everything. I thought it would be a good idea to work somewhere people wouldn't overhear. And where I don't have to steal people's Bunsen burners. Or listen to them go on and on about how crazy I am," she added bitterly. The lights gently came on.

It was more like a den than a lab. Most of it had a bareness to it, except for one corner which had a desk whose drawers bulged with papers, and the chair by the computer monitor, which was the swivel kind that the facility seemed to have proscribed, and the bookcase that stood next to the desk. There were textbooks, and there were books by famous scientists, and there were science fiction novels. The walls immediately around the area were covered in old maps, things like star charts and two versions of the Periodic Table of the Elements, and quite a few awards and certificates. Strangely enough, the name on all these pieces was either smudged out or simply nonexistent.

"These are yours?" the Doctor asked. "Why isn't there a name on any of them?"

"If they aren't mine, then there'd have to be someone else here who went the same schools as me and won an Intel award. There used to be a name on them. I've always wondered why there isn't one now. But what other name could have been there but mine?" Xan was preparing a space on a table. The room must have been used for rather extreme experiments, because installed in the center was a tall generator covered in switches and dials. It was about the size of a dresser.

"Ah. So is this a full-sized fuel cell? It can power a whole city?"

"It didn't hold the same type of fuel that I showed you. Something cruder, I think. And experimental, so you have to reconfigure it every time you use it. That might be why no one uses this space. The old fuel didn't have as much power output, and at any rate the cells are nearly empty. See, this fuel cell is from the old university. When it got rebuilt, they tried to use up as much of the old technology as possible, to save money and everything. The maintenance slip has the cell registered by the name R. Hussein... that's why I'm not _technically _allowed to use it. Because that's not me, obviously. But whoever he was, he doesn't work for the university anymore."

There was something strikingly familiar in the way the girl walked a full circuit around the generator, pressing a button here and watching dials carefully.

"So you just like working in here, with this highly experimental fuel generator that messes with time? Just for the fun of it?"

"Just _like_? Why do you think I work _here_? This is my mad scientist den. Of course it has to have a highly experimental power source!" She perched herself on the edge of the table and swung her legs thoughtfully. The look on her face was serene, but her eyes were very wide. "It's never actually done anything interesting," she said, with a hint of regret. She concentrated on a spot of air off to one side and dreamily added, "Like short-circuiting the building, or opening a portal into another dimension, or mutating the lab rats so they become intelligent and rise up against their torturers..."

The Doctor found that amusing. "And those are all _good_ things?"

"They're _interesting_ things. I never said _good_."

"Be careful what you wish for..." The Doctor removed the monitor from the stand pulled out the flash drive. When he plugged it in, the screen lit up and information began to pour out onto the screen. He took a few short moments performing a series of operations, using hotkeys and shortcuts so each command flashed on the screen for less than a second. "I reformat the data so it isn't stored on the cloud," he explained. "It's stored in the actual hard drive, which means it's harder to retrieve, but it can't act as a fishhook."

"Wait. Don't tell me..."

"When data started being stored on the cloud more often, obviously computer viruses had to evolve. And slang. Isn't that in period? No?"

"What 'period' are you from, then?"

He didn't answer directly. "Oh, here and there. Everywhere. Nowhere."

"The file is the bait, right? And the virus is the hook. Oh, I see. It's a type of Trojan Horse. Like a taser."

"How does a... taser... work? Fry your computer?"

"Ha. No. They make it so that if you open the file, it connects you to the internet so some other server can download viruses onto your computer. Or anything else. Or take it off. It can rewrite your personal files, or plant files, or find out your credit card or cell phone number."

"Why are they called tasers, then? They should have been called J. Edgar Hoovers."

Xan laughed, and tried to look at what the Doctor was doing. "How are you getting all this? How do you know that those strands are on the same chromosome?"

"Stop peering over my shoulder," he ordered. "I'm trying to concentrate."

"Well, fine." She moved away and waited a few moments, then tactfully reappeared. "What process are you using?"

"Doesn't have a name. But it's not one you'd know. Trust me. I know what I'm doing here. And stop breathing down my neck, that's weird."

"I am _not_ breathing down your neck!" she retorted, highly offended.

"Well, _now_ you aren't. This is a little difficult. I have to keep a lot of things in my head at the same time. You're being a little distracting."

Xan tried to hold her breath and speak at the same time. "I'm not doing anything distracting. Unless you count my general presence as distracting. Is that what's distracting you?"

"You aren't doing anything helpful, either."

"I'm _trying_ to!" she protested, in tones of great agony. But she waited a little while, impatiently but quietly.

"If you're just trying to create a karyotype, I can do that easily."

"So can I. The way the data's given, though, you wouldn't know how. It's just bits and pieces." "I _would_ know how!" Her indignation was burning brighter now. "I work with bits and pieces all the time! I'm a _paleogeneticist!_ Like the guys in Jurassic Park, in case you didn't know what that means!"

"I know what it means! Not very good role models, were they, though? I could have done a better job than them. Well, obviously I could..."

"Yes," said Xan in exasperation. "Of course you could. Guess what? So could I! Have you ever _read_ the book?"

He laughed. "Don't insult my intelligence."

"Don't you insult mine! Remember how the problems started? They didn't have all the pieces of the DNA, so they used frog DNA instead, but that made them change their gender so they had babies blah blah blah but what's _important_ about that is that they could use frog DNA and lizard DNA because they're so alike, and you can get a clearer picture if you use a reference karyotype..."

"This technique is really old, okay? No one on Earth knows it. No one in the universe does, anymore, except me. And it works. Really well. I'm trying to think... Why don't you go read a book or something?"

Xan exploded, but like a star: soundlessly, in the middle of near-absolute zero temperatures. With frigid silence, she snatched her computer away from the Doctor.

"Hey," he said. "Give that back."

"Time me," she snarled.

"What?"

"_Sixty seconds. Time me. Go._"

"But what are you doing?"

No answer.

"That's human DNA. Why are you looking at...?"

The Doctor received no response. The term 'cold shoulder' was much too mild for this. The shoulder could have crystallized the air around it.

"It's not human DNA. What you're reconstructing, it isn't human. I can tell you that right now. Couldn't be. See, there. That's not..."

Xan furiously reconfigured the strands on the screen, with all the air of someone speed-solving a Rubik's cube, and all the anger of an athlete trying to untie a Gordian's knot in the laces of their track shoes minutes before a meet. The computer was beginning to stall in an effort to keep up.

"I think that's time," the Doctor told her, looking at his watch.

About five more seconds passed, and then Xan thrust the screen towards the Doctor. "This is the karyotype," she said tonelessly. The strands had all been organized neatly into twenty distinct groups. "I don't have anything from chromosome pairs thirteen or two. And no sex chromosomes, either. But this is it."

"How did you...?"

"And now I will tell you about the organism. First of all, it's the Siren Hound. How do I know? These groups of modified strands: spinal structure. Quadrupeds, but modified from bipeds. This one: musculature. It also ends up affecting skin tone: blue-black. This one. This one. Olfactory enhancements, one very old, one new. Incredibly keen smell, Sound familiar? Now, this one: owl eyes; hawk eyes: night vision and pinpoint accuracy. This group here: cellular endurance. It looks like a correction of some kind of flaw, because it raises a cell's life span to about standard. Because, see, altering levels of telomerase. This, here. One of my ideas. I came up with this alteration. A switch. Doesn't make a protein unless a tag forms. This triggers a cascading response. You see a huge group of these tags. So in this, there's essentially two genomes, piled into one. When a certain chemical is absent, the mostly unaltered genome is dominant. If the chemical is produced, it gets spread by endocrine system, a positive feedback loop, until the secondary genome is dominant. That's the one where there's the most alterations. It builds on an old system though. See there. These two chromosomes, they aren't at all like human chromosomes. Or any mammal. Or any animal, for that matter. It's part of the scent enhancement. There's a specified receptor here I don't recognize, but I'll bet it responds to tau radiation. It's been enhanced but not completely fabricated. Also, these organisms were altered _during_ their lifetime, not grown from scratch. Again, my work there. They've used a lot of my breakthroughs in the last year to make these GMOs, and that pisses me off. But at least I can tell you all this now."

The Doctor appreciated intelligence, Xan knew. But he did so in a way that was almost condescending, and this abraded against her. It was maddeningly redolent of Xan's P.I., River Song. You could impress the Doctor, but only in the way a toddler would impress an adult if the child began delving into matters of fourth grade science.

There was none of that now. The Doctor's eyes were utterly round, and he could find no words to express his astonishment. At long last, with the most genuine tone that Xan had seen him assume, he said, "All that in one minute?"

Still slightly wounded, Xan focused on the wall directly next to the Doctor, glaring at it as though it had wronged her grievously. "And... five seconds," she forced herself to say, to her a shameful admission.

"Yeah, and five seconds, which really changes things, doesn't it? A computer couldn't have done that. _I _couldn't have done that."

It seemed to be a silly question to ask but: "Why not?"

"Well... I _suppose_ you could... I don't really... You're only working with tiny pieces. Some of them only single proteins. Only a portion of a protein. There are countless possibilities. Takes a long time, you know?"

"Frog DNA, remember?"

"Yes. I don't really..." A bit of light dawned in his eyes, but he let her continue.

"I mentioned a reference karyotype, didn't I? A lot of DNA is alike. They follow the same patterns. I have to focus on what's distinct."

The Doctor nodded, slowly, realizing how familiar this all sounded.

"So I have a program to disregard the similar areas, which is a lot of it. Then I splice together the DNA sample I have, which is usually damaged, and DNA that's very similar, and use another program to read through the amino acids that are distinct and translate them into proteins. With actual DNA, I use artificial ribosomic structures. On a computer, it's even easier. So then I have a set of reconstructed proteins that are unique, and I study them to find out what the effects they have on the body. That way, I can build the dinosaur, as it were. I just need to find the unique bits. Then, the rest is just to fill out the picture. The result is what I call a Translative Recombinant Genome Analysis, or TRG Analysis. And a computer can't do it because it doesn't know what's important and what's not. That's hard to program in. But a human could do it. Or a sentient ribosome."

"But you aren't a ribosome," the Doctor pointed out reasonably. "To spot a pattern in DNA just by eye... that's something... well, I don't want to sound arrogant... sort of... but it's true... that's something only I could do."

She shrugged. "I'm good with languages. So I guess what I'm doing is reading DNA. Just a little. I know all the amino acid codons, and I have the computer programmed to recognize common patterns with proteins, so that helps." For reasons the Doctor could not fathom, she held the computer out to him. "I've never gone under a minute," she informed him. " I don't usually rush, either. I might have missed something; why don't you check?" It wasn't a gesture of vindictiveness. She wasn't gloating at all, to the Doctor's relief. The pad was an olive branch, and he accepted it with grace.

There was still something strikingly familiar in her description of the analysis. It took a moment to realize what it was: _everything_. "It's quite a clever idea," he commented to her as he looked though the DNA.

"I guess so."

"It's also the technique that I was using," he said quietly.

She started. "That doesn't make any sense," she blurted out. "How could you...? It was my idea. I didn't copy anyone... why would I pretend? I swear, that idea was mine."

"My... the people who I learned it from didn't seem to think so. They taught that it came from them."

"They from the future?"

"They could be," he equivocated. It would be hard to lie there, anyway. The Doctor continued to look though the file. There didn't seem to be any errors in the analysis she made, which was astonishing.

"Then they got it from me. It's not exactly something you come up with independently, is it? It's not truth or knowledge or objective fact. It's a technique. A way of thinking. And I wouldn't have thought that other people could use it... it's... personalized, it's custom-made, it works for me because of the way I think. It wouldn't work for everyone."

"I can tell that. And I know that you probably did invent it, because it fits you, like you said."

"Nice to know I'm remembered in the future," Xan whispered to herself, and she took the computer back carefully. It took a moment for the Doctor to understand what she meant.

"No, no, it's not like that at all..."

"You've never heard of me. I suppose it would have been vanity to think that I would be that important. But then there's this. You remember the idea, but not the mind it came from. I should have named it after myself." There was dull resignation in her voice. She seemed to be trying desperately to appear unconcerned with all this.

"_Very_ far in the future," consoled the Doctor. "Highly advanced. And still the best way they could come up with. That's something, isn't it?"

This couldn't help but lift Xan's spirits slightly. Still sore, however, from the dispute, she said a bit grumpily, "I hope you heard everything I said before. I wasn't just showing off; it _was_ very important."

"You think they're shapeshifters," said the Doctor.

"Nice call," she admitted.

"That whole bit about two genomes gave it away."

"I know it did."

\ "Are we having werewolves again?"

"Did we have them before?"

"I did."

"Werewolves of London, huh?"

"Scotland, actually. But I don't think these Siren Hounds are the same."

\ Xan decided he was joking. "Because they were made to detect tau radiation, specifically," she agreed. "I can guess that from some of these modifications. These were designed to hunt down-"

"Not just tau radiation," corrected the Doctor. "Huon energy, like I said before."

"So then specific to what? How does that narrow it down?"

"Well, it narrows it down to me and my ship. And anyone else like me, except there aren't any, or anything else like my ship, which there isn't." The Doctor seated himself in the swivel chair and rocked it gently back and forth. _Why does this still all sound so familiar?_ he thought. "So what else is there, besides this genome?"

"I would think it's pretty important," Xan said, folding her arms across her chest.

"But does it relate to the fuel?"

"Well, it's a way of protecting it. They don't want you to find out about the fuel, obviously. I'm coming in here assuming that you're... well-known, among the villainous rings of the city..."

"Universe."

"Good for you, mister galactic hero..."

He laughed. "You sound like someone I knew once; she called me spaceman..."

"...well known throughout the universe, which includes here... do you have any particular weaknesses that could potentially be exploited?"

"Exactly whose side are you on?"

"It's a valid point, you know. I'm not asking you what they are. But is there anything that these people would know about that would make them choose these Siren Hounds specifically? Or any tactic we should expect them to use?"

"Is this science or military strategy? Should I get out a map and some models to push around with a stick? I've always wanted to do that..."

"How about you be quiet and _stop doing that with my swivel chair!_"

The Doctor gave her a salute from far below eye level. "Yes, _ma'am_." He pushed the knob below the seat of the chair and it rose to its normal height.

"Why do people like you even exist?" she asked hopelessly.

"It must be because of people like you," he said. "To even things out."

"To create a balanced social ecosystem. As a limiting factor. You evolved to occupy a niche we created in our existence. We evolved armor, you evolve teeth."

"So this is a... predator-prey relationship, then?"

"Or parasitic symbiosis. But I've evolved defenses to that."

He worked that over in his mind, and a light bulb went on. "Is this a metaphor?"

"It could be a metaphor," she conceded. "They work well as protective coloration. That's _my_ evolutionary trick."

"And _mine_," he said tranquilly, "is to disguise myself so well that you'll never guess I'm not one of you."

The words left an eerie feeling in the air. "Didn't fool me," Xan said, after a pause. "I count my eggs _before_ they hatch, you see."

"_Touché_."

"But before I throw you out of my nest, you imposter, I need to figure out just what horrible fate is about to descend upon the world, and thwart it, and have great honors bestowed to me, and then hopefully I can get my own office and maybe a PhD or two. Or three. And a life. That too. Sound good?"

"Very succinct."

"Oh, and something to eat. I'm starving. But before we get to that, and before we go off on some obscure tangent again, what do you think of this? One of the scientists I talked to said that he was asked to interpret a brain scan Waterhelm gave him. He said it wasn't human. More like a dolphin, is actually what he told me. It could emit a high pitched noise, like echolocation. But he thought it was a distress call."

"Experimenting on people? Or animals? It doesn't exactly sound familiar. It probably wasn't human, he's right, but I don't think it would be dolphin, either."

"He said it was very intelligent. There aren't many other species on the planet on the same level as dolphins and humans, you know."

"Exactly," the Doctor said cryptically. He scratched at the nape of his neck and then turned back to the pad very suddenly. "You said before... about the cellular endurance? Something about that?"

"It was improved. By quite a lot."

"From what?"

Xan shrugged. "Not very long, I think." She looked at the data again and thought hard. "There was deterioration," she said. "Not in the DNA, but in the tags. The epigenetic tags."

"Turning the genes on and off. Right."

"If this DNA was replicated without modifications, those tags wouldn't hold. That wouldn't kill the cells, but it would make them stop working."

"Just to be sure... how long do you think a cell can live?"

"Anywhere from second to a few years."

"Brain cells, specifically, then?"

"I'm not sure. I'll have to check."

"Well, supposing you didn't have any cells dividing in your body. Healthy cells don't replace sick ones, or damaged ones, and so on and so on."

"That's called old age," Xan pointed out.

"I know that, but if it _all_ stopped... all at once. No more cell division. No more stem cells. Nada. How long could you live?"

"Human? You could probably stretch it out to a few years."

"Hmm... as an old man you could, but what if you couldn't be old? What if the body had to run at peak efficiency? Muscles in good condition, memory still good, all that?"

"A month or two, I guess."

"That's what I thought," the man murmured. He kept looking at the pad, and rubbed the bridge of his nose, all concentration.

Then an idea hit Xan, and she leapt for the door. The Doctor, startled, looked up to see her fly around the corner. Then her hand slapped back onto the doorframe and she pulled her head back inside for a brief moment. "Wait there one minute!" she exclaimed, and disappeared again. He heard footsteps sprinting down the hallway, and he rushed for the door and leaned all the way into the corridor.

"Where are you- oh never mind," he sighed. Then, greatly cheered, he turned back to the huge fuel cell in the middle of the lab, took out his glasses, and began to examine the generator with great intensity. He hummed a little to himself, then squatted on the floor and opened a chamber with his sonic screwdriver for careful inspection.

And the door to the lab opened. The Doctor shot to his feet, about to ask a question, then stopped as a voice that wasn't Xan's at all asked, "Who are you? What are you doing in here?"

**AN: Once more, I would love reviews! And if you can, try to specifically mention things from the chapter you're reviewing - the one's I've gotten like that have been really helpful. Even if you just spit back at me little details, it means so much. I don't mind long-winded reviews - I like them! A lot! But if you just read the story, just write a really short review to let me know you enjoyed it. And if you have a problem with it, then say so. A critical review is useful too. And check out my other stories if you like this one!**


	15. Chapter 15

**AN: THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! There are a few things you need to understand about RIVER SONG. And the first is that in my universe, she is a lot less important. In that she's not really as much a you-know-what Lord and her involvement with the Doctor is more minimal. Think about it. If Eleven never exists (a shame, since I know he's cool too, but I'm keeping Ten 3 ), River's going to be a very different person here, since she's had (and is going to have) a very different future. Now, I think I've decided to keep her in my universe (I need her to end up in the Library) but if she's not the way you expect her to be, that's intentional. She's not the same as in the new series. Up until this point, she seems to have lived a normal life.**

The Doctor whipped out his psychic paper. "Waterhelm health and safety inspector," he said smartly, and leaned over the cell to show the stranger his credentials. "This device is an outdated and experimental model. It needs to be examined in order to pass inspection." Then he focused on the woman standing in front of him. Slowly, he took his glasses off and straightened up. The frames clicked twice as he folded them in his hand.

Dr. River Song gave him a funny look. "Is there a problem?"

"You work here?" His countenance was close to blank.

"Yes. I'm a principal investigator here. Why do you-?"

"River Song, right? Archeology department, no?"

The woman blinked. "Do I know you?" Then she looked at the thing in the Doctor's other hand. "What's that?"

He held it up. "It's a sonic screwdriver," he said carefully.

"It's a _what?_"

Relief flooded his face. "No," he told her. "You don't know me. What was I thinking? So sorry. I should probably get back to my work."

"What if I told you," said the woman, just as carefully, "that Waterhelm doesn't have a health and safety department?"

"Well if they don't, I certainly wasn't told. I suppose my paychecks come from trees," he said scornfully.

"They don't. There isn't a health and safety department," said Song.

"New year, new plan. Can't run a business without a health and safety department, can you?" He showed her the ID again. She gave it a blank stare.

"Well, all right then." She turned away, about to leave, when the door burst open. River Song stared at Xan, who Looked back. "What are _you_ doing here?" she asked, suspicion returning.

Behind the woman, the Doctor hurriedly mouthed the words _health and safety inspector_ and pointed to himself.

"The... inspector..."

_From Waterhelm_, the Doctor mouthed. Xan glanced at the fuel cell.

"The inspector from Waterhelm wanted a sample of the fuel to test the generator with," said Xan coolly. "He asked me to get one."

"Why were you running, then?"

"Youthful high spirits?" suggested Xan, irritated. "Sorry about that."

"I thought you went home for lunch," persisted Song. "Just a minute or two ago."

Behind Song, the Doctor seemed to realize something which gave him great relief. "I got a banana at a cafe," explained Xan reasonably, wondering at the Doctor's reaction. Over Song's shoulder, Xan saw the Doctor perk up at the word _banana_, and Xan gave him a look of, _Are you kidding me, dude?_ _Seriously?_ River Song turned around to see what that was all about, and then faced Xan again. "Before or after the inspector asked you to get the fuel sample?"

"Before."

"So where is it?"

"I ate it!" she said angrily, now giving River Song the 'kidding-me-dude' look in her extreme exasperation.

"The _sample?_"

"No! The banana!"

"In a minute?"

"In a minute, yeah! I was hungry! Besides, it was more like five minutes ago. How fast can _you_ eat a banana?"

"I don't know. I don't like them very much."

The Doctor stared at River Song in horror. Xan, sensing an outbreak of insanity, dodged around the woman and showed the Doctor a tiny vial. "This is the sample from your bag," she invented, trying to act like she normally did around strangers: quiet, polite, and slightly sullen. Xan placed the vial with the centrifuged biofuel in the Doctor's hand. "It was right where you said it would be."

"Good. Thank you. Right."

"_Excuse,_" Xan muttered, and began to walk away slowly.

The Doctor stepped up to River Song quickly. "Is she under your authority?" he asked.

"Yes. She's a student at the labs."

"Do you mind if I borrow her for a little while? She's pretty clever, even if she is a little quiet, and I need someone to watch the readouts while I work. Safety procedure and everything."

He was wondering if he should show River the ID for a third time when she finally relented. "All right. Xan?"

"Mm-hm?"

"The inspector needs you to help him for a little while. Is that all right?" She made it clear in her tone that the only acceptable answer would be 'yes.'

"I have to work on the..." Xan protested.

"You really have to learn to work with other people," said the woman. "And do something productive for a change. No more tau radiation business."

The Doctor winced. _Either she _really_ changed or I did,_ he thought, _if I ever knew her as well as she said I will._ Xan was able to hold back an angry retort. As if sharing a joke, River Song looked back at the Doctor and raised her eyes to the ceiling. Xan saw it, and flirted with the idea of homicide. If the Doctor hadn't been there, she might have picked a fight, but she controlled herself, and waited for Song to leave the room. Then Xan shut the door and slowly counted to ten in her head.

At about eight or nine, she allowed her stiff posture to stand at ease. "Oh god, I hate her. So. Much." She took the opportunity to steal the swivel chair and put her head in her hands. "She really, honestly thinks I'm... developmentally disabled or something. She really does. It's so stupid. The worst part is, she thinks she's being kind. But it rubs off on everyone else, too, and then _they_ all think it."

The Doctor was sympathetic. "You couldn't try being a little more... sociable?"

"It's hard," said Xan. "I don't understand anyone anymore."

"So then maybe you do have a problem."

"Yeah, but not Asperger's! Or whatever the hell she thinks I have."

"She didn't really know whether or not there was a heath and safety department," the Doctor said, annoyed. "I know she didn't. She was making that all up."

"So were you, though," pointed out Xan. "But I know what you mean. She's always watching me. It's so creepy."

"She's a good person, you know," the Doctor told Xan.

"Who, Dr. Song?"

He nodded. "Is she only a doctor at this point? She looked a lot younger. Well, I've met her before."

"Before for you but not for her, right? Because she didn't recognize you."

"You're catching on to this time travel thing pretty quickly."

"Yeah, it won't be long before I start muddling up my verb tenses. Go on. When did you meet her?"

"I told you, actually."

"You did? When?"

"Spoilers, remember?"

"That was _her_? I should have known! It sounded just like her, to say that!" Xan leaned over the back of the chair, laughing. "What a future! I'm glad I'm not her."

"She saved my life," admitted the Doctor.

"Yeah, but you don't have to _like_ her."

"Apparently I will, though. Oh, well." He didn't say that there was someone who reminded him most of the River he'd met, because that someone might not have liked to hear it.

"By the way, you looked a little relieved about something back there," Xan said.

"She said you'd left the office a few minutes ago. Now, that may not seem true to you, but remember there was the time... slip... thing... You know what? We need a name for those... something catchy and technobabbly... 'cos temporal distortion's such a bother to say every. Single. Time. You know?"

Xan waited expectantly for the conversation thread to return to normal.

"Right. Riiight. Sorry. But anyway, imagine if we'd met you leaving the building. Gotten to the lab before you left. If we'd gone faster, we would have!"

"Wow." Xan considered this. "That was lucky, then."

"So what _is_ this, really?" He held up the vial.

"No, no, no. That really _is_ biofuel. That was my idea. I remembered that I still had this, because I'd been running tests on the fuel..."

"It looks different... oh, you've separated it out, good thinking. I thought we didn't have any left. This is perfect!"

"Will that be enough to examine, though?" Xan worried aloud. "I'd need about fifty cc's at least to run the normal sequencing examination on it."

"_Sequencing_?" The Doctor was surprised. "You think there's genetic material in there?"

Xan removed her own flash drive from her pocket and downloaded the video and notes onto the computer. As the Doctor examined this, Xan explained all her theories about the fuel and the strange way it behaved. "I think you're right about the fission-fusion thing," she said. "It makes sense, in a funny way. Even though I've never seen anything like this fuel before." The Doctor found the video clip even more captivating that Xan did. He didn't know what to make of it, either, Xan realized. As they talked, they both felt more and more confused. How on earth did the fuel relate to the temporal distortions if it was _biological_? How could it release so much energy? And if it came from an organism, what organism would that be?

"I can't find out, though," Xan said gloomily. "There isn't enough left. And I don't know where else to get it. That factory must have manufactured the cells, but they aren't on the market anymore. Do we have to go back into the subways again?"

"_I_ don't need that much fuel to analyze it," said the Doctor, looking up.

"I thought your machine was broken," answered Xan. "You told me that, before."

"Well, I have to fix it anyway." He shrugged. "Why don't you come help? D'you want to see what a time machine looks like?"

Xan scrambled to her feet. "Yesokaythatsoundsgood," she said fervently. "I'mreadylet'sgo." In an instant she was at the door. She held it open for the Doctor on his way through. Had Sweden offered to give Xan a Nobel Prize, and IUPAC her own named element, she would not nearly be as eager as she was now.

* * *

><p>Underneath London<p>

December 23rd, 2021

"No!"

"It may seem repulsive to you, but this is really a matter of self-defense..."

"_NO!_"

"Would you care to enlighten us, once more, about the fate of those who cross the self-appointed Time Lord Victorious?"

A hiss.

Another voice, bored: "Oh, god. Don't get it started, you nitwit."

"_If you MURD-_"

"How very crude of you."

"Are you _trying_ to make him angry?"

"If he finds out what _this_ is, then you may _depend upon his wrath_. The only good place for him is... well, you understand..."

"_How many people do you think work at-?_"

"Self-preservation, like I said. Sacrifices have to be made."

"_I won't let you!_"

"Anyone else care to agree with you?"

Utter silence. Then, a few chuckles. Someone whistled pensively under their breath.

"You _wouldn't_. None of you! This isn't some kind of stock market manipulation we're talking about. You wouldn't _do_ this. Just sit and watch? You can't! You-!"

A slithering and a quick, sharp _snap!_

"Well. That really wasn't so difficult, was it?" A pause, which more laughter occupied. "No. I just... didn't think so. We proceed tomorrow as planned."

**AN: By the way, the story will get a lot less life-threatening for the next, oh, five chapters or so. If that's not your kettle of fish I understand. But if you've enjoyed the way the Doctor and Xan interact (I think it's almost cute), then you may like what happens. It _is_ mildly adorable.**


	16. Chapter 16

Just Outside London

December 23rd, 2021

A bus slid to a stop and the doors opened by the little wintry shelter on the hill. It was not a well-trafficked road, but the network of public transportation had expanded alongside of the speed and efficiency of vehicles. The two passengers watched it streak off, kicking up pebbles and dead, frosted leaves.

"I wonder why no one comes up here," pondered the Doctor.

"Yeah, like the tabloids?" This had preyed on Xan's mind all during the ride up: a swarm of UFO enthusiasts, broken clocks leaping upon the minute they point to with evil, triumphant glee, keeping her away from her prize.

"Oh, _that's_ because of the perception filter. No, I meant more long term. Why didn't anyone build up here?"

"Perception filter..."

"Renders anything effectively invisible to passersby. Your mind disregards what you see. Pretty clever, because true invisibility's a bother."

"You have that on your ship?"

"And you could see through it. Because you're weird."

"_I'm_ weird?"

"For a human."

"Wow. You found me out. I'm actually a dolphin in a flesh suit. I'm sorry I had to lie about that."

The old factory still stood, as broken and run-down as ever, complete with the crater that had formed in the middle.

"So _no one_ _actually_ _wonders_ why there's a giant hole in the ground?"

"They probably do. But they've learned not to go near anything like this on Christmas."

"So it falls to the hapless foreigner." Two figures stepped one by one through a doorframe. "This is where I found you. So the-"

Xan stared at the object in the middle of the room. "It _moved_," she said accusingly.

"Every time you blink," joked the Doctor. "No, actually I flew it up here."

"It _flies?_"

"How dull would it be if it didn't?"

The blue police box was waiting innocently in the center of the floor, upright. Xan moved her head back and forth, squinting her eyes and then opening them wide. There seemed to be no sign of this purported perception filter. Xan figured it probably had the same principle as the psychic paper, in which case she was immune as well.

"Just though the air?"

"And space, too. It can go anywhere, really."

"So it's a time-_and_-spaceship?"

"Close. Time... and relative dimensions _in_ space. Or, TARDIS, for short."

"Relative dimensions because of relativity, or related to time in the same way as something else?"

The Doctor sighed and rummaged through his pockets. "So it begins..." Xan was pacing around the TARDIS wonderingly, trying to look through the windows, but they were not transparent.

"This is really weird... what's it like inside?"

"You'll see," promised the Doctor, reaching into his coat. Xan touched the wood. Or was it wood? Where you looked for seams and edges, you found that it was actually all one piece. It was warm, but the air was cold. Xan pressed a fingernail against one edge. Rather than making a little dent, as expected, the material was as hard as a rock.

"It's a bit small, though."

The Doctor raised a hand, now searching his pants pockets. "Just you wait."

She did.

The Doctor went through his shirt pockets for a second time, with slightly more haste. "Ah! Here we a- oh, no, that's not it..." He tucked the keychain back into his pocket.

"It's not?"

"No, it's the key to Buckingham Palace..."

"What? Really?"

"Yep."

"You can't use your screwdriver for that? And why do you...?"

The Doctor paused reproachfully. "I could," he said. "But that would be very rude of me." Then he went back to digging through his pockets. Finally he gave up.

"Did you _lock the keys to your time machine inside it?_" asked Xan incredulously.

"Oh, shut up." The Doctor sighed again.

"_Are_ we locked out?"

"No. No. Oh, well. Time for the theatrics, I suppose." He stepped away from the door, raised a hand, and snapped his fingers. With a faint click in response, the door creaked open. "I try not to do that too often, you know. Much too flashy. But, here we are. What's the matter?" Xan, stock still in the center of the shaft of light from the open door, seemed hesitant to go forward. "See, this is what I mean. If I'd just _opened_ it, it wouldn't be so dramatic. Come on." The girl stared at the man in the doorway, who was outlined in yellow and blue light. He groaned affectedly and grabbed her arm. "You," he said, pulling her forward, "have got to see this."

The only possible way to describe it was that it felt like three-dimensional space had been a mere facade, an image revealed to be merely an illusion. Or was it the other way around? Was _this_ real, or was the outside real? Because it was simply impossible for both to be.

The ceiling of the police box - _TARDIS,_ she thought,_ it's called a TARDIS_ - had fled to the highest rafters. The walls had leapt back and rounded out. Stepping into the small box, you found yourself in a giant room. On a raised platform stood a massive, pale blue column of clear material - Xan could hardly expect it to be as mundane as glass or plastic. It was a frozen fountain of light, and its base was a round console that glowed blue under the controls. The pattern of what looked like massive brown nuts and bolts on the orange-yellow walls, and the tall blue and green coral structures, gave the impression that the whole room nestled in the arms of a metal kraken.

It was so foreign that it took a moment to notice that some parts of it were quite damaged. And it was repairing itself. Xan saw broken glass (or was it glass?) slowly pooling together and seeping back into a frame. She realized one of the coral structures was broken in some places, but the rough edges seemed to smooth out as she watched. Occasionally something would spit out one or two sparks, and there were burns all over the walls if you looked hard enough.

And it couldn't possibly be real.

"Before you ask..." began the Doctor, striding up to the console and settling down on one of the seats that curved around it.

Xan, brow furrowed, gathered up some of her shirt in one hand and pinched it off into a little bundle, which she endeavored to display. "Like this, no?"

The Doctor looked at the bunched-up shirt. After a little pause he nodded, surprised. "Something like that, yeah. In a very... basic... sort of way. But, moved up a dimension. Three-dee fabric. You know, you're the first person who ever actually tried to _figure_ _it out_. They usually just say something really obvious, like, 'ooh, it's bigger on the inside.' Like I hadn't noticed."

"So I just moved four-dimensionally to get in here."

"You're _always_ moving four-dimensionally, so, yeah."

Xan slowly made her way to the console, her eyes breathing in great gusts of miracles with every step. When she spoke, it seemed to be autopilot, because her entire attention was on the world she had been transported into. "Fourth dimension in space. Not time."

"Ah, but movement though _n _dimensions, while experienced as time to an _n_-dimensional object, actually can be represented by an extra spatial dimension in its entirety, so time is really a function of dimensional addition rather than movement, because movement is a finite, fully enclosable aspect of reality in a higher dimension."

Xan unraveled this. "So time and space," she said thoughtfully, "are actually the same thing."

"Not bad," acknowledged the Doctor. He thought a bit more. "Except they aren't, really." He patted the seat next to him, and Xan hesitantly sat down, almost as if she had forgotten how.

"Too much?" he asked sympathetically.

"Why do you always ask me that?"

"I don't! What are you talking about?"

She turned to him and gave him a serious look. "You kept on asking me if I wanted to go back, or if I was too scared, or actually trying to scare me, or something in that vein. Are you trying to make me keep away from all this or are you trying to make me curious about it?"

"Not everything I do is that well thought out, you know. But I'm flattered that you think it is."

"Well, _I'm_ flattered that you think my opinion of you is _that_ important," responded Xan neutrally. The wonder in her was fading slightly, but it still crushed all other emotions in her except for primitive instincts and a store of witty remarks, which was rapidly being depleted. The Doctor was mildly nonplussed, which was rare. He could be astonished or startled, but bemusement was not common. Xan was quite a conundrum. There seemed to be a certain level of intimacy that she willingly accepted in any kind of relationship, but, once reached, it was an absolute cutoff.

Xan was falling back on the 'primitive instincts' area of her consciousness. "Do you have anything to eat?" she asked hopefully.

"Er. Yeah. I might. One second." The Doctor sidled over to a door and disappeared inside it for a few moments. Xan sat and waited politely, wondering exactly how much more space the interior of the TARDIS held. She folded her arms over her knees and inspected some of the controls on the console. The Doctor's voice drifted out from in the other room. "Well, there's chips."

"Do they crunch when you eat them or do you eat them with ketchup?" replied Xan carefully, who was aware of some of the differences in terminology on the different shores of the Atlantic. She reached out a finger to touch one of the switches, then realized that would probably not be a good idea.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, are they chips as in fish and chips, or are they chips as in chips and dip?"

"They're in a bag," called the Doctor, as if that helped.

"Then I _think_ it's probably the second one," Xan called back, although she was unsure of this. "Is there anything else?"

"Well, there's this green stuff."

Xan sat back and folded her legs. "There's this green stuff," she repeated slowly. "Do you mean _mold_?"

"No, it's like applesauce," he called, "except it isn't. I'm not sure what it is. The TARDIS seems to think it's food, though. Then again, it eats radiation, so maybe green stuff _isn't_ a good idea."

"Do you mean it _runs on_ radiation or it actually _eats_ radiation?"

The Doctor appeared not to have heard this. He came out with his arms full of the oddest assortment of foodstuffs. "It kept making all this," he said self-consciously. "It seems to think that you would want it. I don't know, sometimes it gets these weird notions." He carefully laid it all out on the floor and surveyed it. Then he picked up a bowl full of bright, verdant slush. "I still don't know what _this_ is," he said, putting it aside gingerly. "It might not be good for you to eat."

Everything else appeared to be recognizable to Xan. She knelt and examined a plastic container filled with pasta. Then she cupped it in her hands like a baby bird, and stared at it. "I used to have this a lot," she said, with a hint of sorrow in her voice. "I don't remember when."

"When you were little?" For some reason, the Doctor found this strange.

"No. Not then. I don't remember."

"You aren't _that_ old," he said, confused. "Me, forgetting stuff, yeah. _I'm_ old."

Xan looked at him.

"-er than you," he finished hurriedly. "But not... that much," he lied. "That is, not in a _bad_ way... never mind..."

There was a fork in a wrapper hidden in the mess. Xan picked it up, pulled the top off the container slowly, and ate.

And kept eating. Somehow she had the appetite of a zoo animal. She also took in more liquids than a whale shark hunting for plankton. It was like all her zeal and intelligence came at a great cost of energy that she had to constantly compensate for. Even stranger was the fact that her manners were perfectly respectable, and she laid everything aside in a neat, interlocking pile so well-organized that it looked like she had the TARDIS touch. The Doctor watched in fascination as a mound of containers and used napkins became a small, dense cube. Occasionally he picked up a cherry, or a cracker, or a piece of cheese, just to give the impression that he and normal things like hunger and nutrition and midday meals were very old friends.

The Doctor gathered up the remainder of the food when Xan had decided that eating was no longer important (though she was still, in fact, hungry). As the Doctor headed for wherever it was that served as a kitchen, Xan snatched up a bowl of fruit before he could cause her to part with it.

"You're a vegetarian, aren't you?" he asked upon returning.

"Right. You noticed." Xan was pleased.

"No hamburgers. No turkey sandwiches. No BLT's. No fish."

"And mostly organic, too. I lead a ridiculously healthy lifestyle. I just thought you ought to know that."

The Doctor laughed because he figured that, in retrospect, his own lifestyle was incredibly unhealthy, in that it caused many potential health problems. Such as dying. Being possessed by suns. Being turned old. Having your face sucked off. Trapped in a picture. Oh, and the usual: shot, stabbed, beaten, eaten, thrown from high places, falling into pits, falling into black holes, radiation (which was usually what got him, in the end), deletion, extermination, et cetera. But there was plenty of good, wholesome exercise.

The presence of the familiar tastes to Xan did the most good. It felt like a gesture of good faith from the ship. So she asked: "This... TARDIS isn't just a machine, is it?"

As was to be (un)expected, the Doctor had enshrined himself in the space underneath the surface of the console, presumably making repairs. When he re-emerged, he had the proud air about him that distinguishes 'home' from 'house' in the minds of the owners, but he didn't respond to Xan's question. "Look in that box, there," he instructed, with one arm still under the console. "I need something with an oscillator. It's like a sort of clear thing with a red diamond-shaped thing in it."

_And so the introduction to future technology commences,_ thought Xan. She dangled over the railing behind her and tried to pick through the materials. Initially she attempted simply to lift up the box, but it was so heavy that she thought at first it was screwed into the floor. "Why's the box this _heavy?_" she asked, her wrist aching.

"Oh, there's a lump of dark matter somewhere in the bottom, I can't get it out. Where's that oscillator? This valve is really hard to hold!"

"_Dark _matter?_ Really?_" Xan was inclined to rummage through the box to uncover this, but didn't want to damage anything. One of the spare parts she found had a clear tube with a red crystal suspended in it. "That's not a _diamond_," she said doubtfully.

"Diamond-_shaped_, I said!"

"It's a rhombus. Or a kite. Either one."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "That's only for two dimensions," he corrected.

"It looks like a Plumbob." Xan handed the Doctor his oscillator, and he hastily attached it to the bottom of the console. Immediately he scurried off to inspect a new part. "Got to get the main computers online, if we're going to analyze that fuel. Let's see... oh!" The underside of the console shot out a jet of blue sparks. Xan leapt back. "Damn! The crystal's misaligned. Go get another one." He rushed back to the oscillator and removed it while Xan returned cautiously to the cosmically obese crate. "Wait. What's a Plumbob?"

"You know that game _The Sims_?"

"The one where they all talk in gibberish?"

"Yep. That's Simlish. And you know the green diamond thing above their head that says you're controlling them? That's a Plumbob. How will I know if a crystal is good or bad?"

"Well, if it's radially symmetric around the main vertical axis, that's usually a good sign."

"And if it's blue?"

"That's a spanner."

"And if it's black?"

"It's used up then."

"And if it's purple?"

"Then it's..." He paused, highly suspicious. "Wait a minute..."

"Only joking." She passed him a second part and continued to rifle through the box. "Is there a spanner in the sonic screwdriver tip?"

"Yes, actually. Good call."

"So it can focus sound?"

"It converts it into electromagnetic waves. Among other things." The Doctor moved to one side of the console and carefully flipped a switch, making sure his legs were well out of the way of the potential spray of sparks. The computer screen seated directly above the oscillator flickered on. He made a pleased sound and adjusted a dial in front of the screen. Immediately it winked out again, to the Doctor's consternation. In a flurry of movement, he readjusted the controls directly around the screen and tried turning it on again.

"No! No! What is this? Stop messing with me!" He gave the side of the screen a knock as if it were a misbehaving child.

"Can I ask a question?" Xan sat on the railing and watched these proceedings peacefully.

The Doctor couldn't stop himself. "You just did."

"_Well then can I ask two more?_" retorted Xan, who knew this particular script well from the days of elementary school.

"Um... Fine, go ahead."

"If it's an oscillator, what exactly does it oscillate?"

"Electric current," murmured the Doctor, who had his sonic screwdriver out and directed at the controls. "Switches frequencies."

She launched into another question anyway. "And why exactly does the fact that a spanner is blue make it a spanner rather than an oscillator, which is red?"

"Impurities."

"Doping?"

"Not silicon, though."

"Carbon? Because then it _would_ be diamond."

"Carbon, yes. Not tetrahedral, so not diamond."

"What shape?"

"Hard to describe. Four-dimensional, though. Get me a coil."

"_Any_ kind of coil?"

"Metal, obviously. I wasn't asking for a _garden_ _hose_."

A few minutes later, at which time the Doctor had moved to a control area in the walls, with Xan following, peppering him with questions, the Doctor pulled his head out of a hole soaked from the neck up, his glasses misty, asking for a garden hose.

By the time he had brought the computer to full power (although the screen still refused to turn on) in about thirty minutes, Xan had learned, mostly by observation and interrogation, the way to power up the TARDIS (a switch, two clear buttons, and a dial that had to be brought so that the lights around it were all blue), the way to shut off power _very_ quickly (hit the dial as hard as possible with a hammer or fist), why there was a light on top of the TARDIS's exterior (waste radiation expelled in the form of photons), why the Doctor wore glasses when he worked despite the fact that his eyesight was perfect (to look like a nerd, which Xan appreciated, being one herself in her own rather more ascetic way), why Earth's sky _wasn't_ blue (it's actually purple, but looks blue to human eyes), the core symbol circles of the Gallifreyan alphabet (which she assumed was some very futuristic race; the Doctor had been unhelpful on this subject), four types of non-baryonic matter and some of their uses, and what it meant if the Plumbob was, in fact, purple.

This was all at her own insistence. Every single part the Doctor asked for had an entire story behind it, and the Doctor soon learned that Xan tended not to give him the part unless he told it, summarizing the use at the very least. She would sit there, examining it, turning it over and over in her hands, always managing in a casual, subconscious way to keep it just out of reach. The exception was, of course, the garden hose, but Xan might have just been too amused at the Doctor's bedraggled state by the time the hose was functioning however it was supposed to function to ask what exactly its function was. About seventy minutes in, the Doctor, having given up on the chameleon circuit (he thought he'd had an idea of how to fix it, but the concept that it _could_ be fixed was probably where the fallacy was in the first place), returned to the console room to see that the computer screen was on and Xan was well on her way to repairing a small part the Doctor hadn't realized was broken.

"Oh hi!" she said, cheerful from the intoxicating glow of success. "The problem _was_ the oscillator after all, so I ran one of the spanners through the microwave and it turned into an oscillator, just like you said, and that one worked. I knew how to fit it in because the others around it are fine. Apparently the crystals were reforming into diamond, see?" She pointed at the screen, which showed a pattern of tetrahedrons spinning slowly. Then she unfolded herself and tapped a few keys, and the program she'd figured out how to run closed down. "The word for diamond, it's _twr_, right?" She pronounced it well: _TOWR_, with a Scottish rolled 'r'.

"_How did you know that_." The Doctor couldn't even muster a query at the end of the sentence. Xan held up a book, which was filled with the beautifully geometric circular writing she'd been so fascinated with. "I can't understand most of it, but this part shows some of the allotropes of carbon, and here it says... _ca'it_ _darung_ _twr_... is that right?" She said the words haltingly, tracing around the circles clockwise as she did so with one finger, but the sounds rang true.

Wordlessly, the Doctor took the volume from her, with a hard look in his eyes. Somehow, Xan felt that she had done something inexcusable. She sat down and stared at her feet, wishing angrily that she had said nothing. Then she felt angry for feeling embarrassed, and she wanted to blame the Doctor, but somehow couldn't. She sat and stewed, and the Doctor stood and watched her, holding the book tightly as though someone wanted to take it from him, and do it harm.

Xan had the greatest desire to speak up with contempt or scorn. She battled with it with all her might. There, hanging like the grapes of Erebus, were the words that she knew how to use, to sting and burn and maim. Selfish, spiteful words. They had always done her bidding, hadn't they? Or was it the other way around? The challenge was to use the ones that didn't want to be said, but needed saying. Xan took her pride, gathered it all up, and then knocked it clean out with the mental equivalent of a right hook. She dragged the unconscious pride away into a cellar somewhere and steeled herself.

And hung her head. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

The Doctor was startled. He'd expected about anything else, but not this. "No, you don't have to be sorry," he blurted out. "It was my fault."

"No. No, it wasn't. I don't need to know what..." she faltered and stopped. Then she rushed on: "I just was curious, and you'd showed me how to... I thought I could figure it out... I don't want to be... don't want to do anything to offend... I didn't know..." Then she stopped and gritted her teeth. _No excuses_, she snarled to herself. _No one cares about them_. "Never mind that," she said. "I'm sorry if I..." Pride groggily sat up in her head, suddenly realized what happened, and lashed out. "I'm sure I couldn't have _known_," Xan spat out, unable to control the haughty words. Then she hated herself for them, but they began to spew forth, but in her mind only, ugly thoughts: _This is exactly why I can't stand to be around other... just when I thought I could be helpful... who made you the one calling the shots? I can do just fine alone... is this some ridiculous sore spot of his?... don't you dare look at me like that... _

Then she wanted to apologize again, but she knew he wouldn't understand why. Wouldn't understand it was her thoughts she was apologizing for, not her actions. She gave up. "You understand my predicament, though," Xan pleaded as she sat down, trying to regain her composure while still sounding conciliatory. Her back hunched and she folded her arms around her chest, visibly uncomfortable. She also refused to look at the Doctor at all.

He sat down next to her. "I shouldn't be angry," he said, sighing. "But the... It's just that I haven't heard anyone speak... but you _are _a linguist, aren't you?" Xan nodded, rolling her eyes. "I can't expect you not to be curious."

"_Is_ this one of those things I'm not supposed to know about?" she asked, fiercely glaring at nothing.

"Ah. Well. It might be. But it's not your fault. It's not dangerous or anything." "So what is it?"

The Doctor looked down. "Personal."

"Oh." Xan looked up so they weren't looking at the same spot. "Can you at least warn me about other things you won't want me to know?"

"Wouldn't that sort of... defeat the purpose, then?"

"True." She let her eyes come to rest on the place where the console disappeared into the ceiling. Xan smiled a little wetly.

"Why're you so happy all of a sudden?" The Doctor gave her a friendly nudge, to let her know that all was forgiven.

"I'm in a time machine," she said in a small voice. "I can't be _that_ upset..."

The Doctor had to agree. He stretched. "Hey!" he exclaimed, startled. "You fixed the computer!"

"Yeah, and the book helped me," stated Xan slowly. "That's the point, right?" The Doctor looked at the book in his hand, then made a face and threw it over his shoulder.

"Who cares about the book?" he scoffed, hearing the satisfying sound of the pages thumping into a basket, a perfect throw. "You can't read it if you don't know how."

Xan began to protest this, but stopped as the Doctor reached into his shirt pocket and pointed his sonic screwdriver at the computer screen. "So why not learn?" he concluded, and he began to use the screwdriver as a remote. The screen flashed through symbols that whirled around each other, twisting slowly and then jumping into something else entirely, the little details always dancing along the edges. Then they slowed and stopped. "See if you can read this," he said at last.

Xan briefly examined the symbols on the screen and racked her memory. One huge symbol dominated them all, followed by a set of smaller symbols, and a group of even smaller letters below. Xan looked at the Doctor and raised an eyebrow. "Should I cover one eye, or should I do it bifocal first?"

The huge letter on the screen was an 'E'.

The Doctor was impressed. "You're quick," he said, and grinned.

Xan read after it under her breath, at a fair speed: "G A B. R N M H F O. T L X S..." she trailed off. "How would I say that?"

"That's a stop. Usually it works as a vowel, whatever one was nearest to it."

"So a little bit like the Mayan glyphs?"

"In a way. Right. And now _this_, this is a consonant stop."

"So there's vowel and consonant stops?"

"The vowel stop's like what you call a schwa. You can do that in informal English, right, put a little apostrophe in there and you're good? Makes it seem all slangy, but you understand it fine. But the consonant stop..." "We don't have them in English, but they're quite prominent in Klingon."

"You speak Klingon?"

"Passably, yes."

"Well, this language doesn't sound anything like Klingon."

"I guessed that."

"So," the Doctor went on, and changed the words on the screen. "What would this say?"

There was an 's' sound, and clockwise around from it, there was a vowel... The whole symbol was very basic.

"Sohn?"

"Close. Think 'soun' as in the word 'sound' without the dee."

"Soun."

"Good! And this word means _zero_. _Soun _means zero. This is how you'd write it numerically. Now look at this."

"Oun."

"Quick learner."

"Not so impressive. It's the same as before, but without the 's'. Does this mean 'one'? That's the numerical symbol?"

"Yup. In fact, 'soun' means 'one less than one'. 'S' for subtraction, eh? Now, try this one."

"Bah-det."

"Ba.t't," he said flawlessly.

"Ba'ah-tet." "Good."

"Two?"

"No, it means 'thirteen.'"

"Why thirteen?"

"Look at the simplified symbol."

"Oh. Oun-soun-i. Like 'one-zero' means ten... It's base thirteen?"

"W- I mean, _they_, had an, um, important biological function connected with thirteen. Like y- we have base ten because of our ten fingers and toes..."

"And the Mayans had base twenty, maybe because twenty fingers and toes all together, and the Sumerians used base sixty because..."

"Because six sixties is three hundred sixty, a circle."

"And it had agricultural significance as well. And a week is seven days because four times seven is twenty-eight, and twenty-eight days is a full lunar cycle."

"And... well, I probably don't need to tell you what else twenty-eight days signifies..."

"Thus the moon is always associated with women, in nearly every culture."

"Human cultures."

"Yeah, I don't know about Mars. Or dolphins."

"You... like dolphins."

"Of course I like dolphins. Who doesn't like dolphins?"

"Tuna?"

"Okay. You got me there."

"So look at this symbol. Look at how it's constructed. Ba.t't. These particular units are called... you'd call them phonemes, or phonemic circles here..."

The lesson went on for a little longer. In time, the Doctor felt daring enough to switch on some of the main functions of the TARDIS, which of course blew out several circuits and set off a whole new cascade of repairs and stories to tell and garden hoses. Xan managed to squeeze out of him the details on fiber optics, the properties of two more kinds of non-elementary matter, the Law of Temporal Elasticity, several applications for quantum strings, the proper way to use a horometer and hyperspatial circuit without harming the fabric of time or yourself (never hold one still near a circuit for any long amount of time), and how to begin programming a flight path for the TARDIS, before it was apparently teatime, which Xan quite enjoyed. She gave a little history lesson on Japanese tea ceremonies, and found out that English tea was quite different and much more informal, or, at least, it was when you are in the middle of repairing a time machine and are continually being offered green sludge to eat/drink. The Doctor, for his part, soon found out that Xan would only have very modest amounts of things like buttered scones but could go through an entire bowl of fruit as if it were candy, and start on another one. She'd elected to have herbal tea, but the Doctor had not, and Xan sipped hers patiently, waiting with a bit of apprehension for the caffeine to take effect.

After that, it all seemed like such a blur, and one moment could seem to take forever, and the next pass by almost before it happened. Putting it all in sequence was impossible. You could only pick out tiny snatches of coherent story.

* * *

><p>The analyzing machine hummed in a funny way. Xan carefully removed a drop of fluid and placed it on the well plate. The Doctor intently watched the dials as the readout began.<p>

"Maybe we'll finally figure out what it is," said Xan, waiting with bated breath.

"And if it's organic material," added the Doctor. He tapped a few keys and then, weary of allowing a mere machine to lead the way, opened up the top and fiddled with the wires.

"And if it's edible," Xan concluded. The bowl of green sauce sat innocuously beside the apparatus, mysterious as ever.

* * *

><p>"How many lengths of garden hose do we need <em>this<em> time?" Xan yelled. The noise from the reactor was deafening.

"Shut it down! Shut it off!"

It took a moment for Xan to concentrate on what she was hearing, because she hadn't been sure if the Doctor was telling her to shut up or shut it off. Figuring that the latter was far more likely, she cast about for a hammer and, finding none, punched the large dial with her fist. The noise stopped.

"What _was_ that?"

"I don't know if I _want_ to know. Why is this so _difficult_...?"

* * *

><p>Or, kneeling next to a little mass of wires, watching the Doctor assemble something out of nothing, just letting the smells and sounds and sights sink in through the skin, feeling the humming of the machines through the floor. Xan put her head back and rested it against the column. Then she felt a hand eagerly pulling on her sleeve, and the Doctor displayed the finished device proudly, pulling off his glasses and replacing the screwdriver in his pocket. Without even having to be asked, the Doctor began to describe what he'd just made. Xan tried to listen, but it was hard to hear over the sound of the earth turning...<p> 


	17. Chapter 17

**AN: Stuff not relating to this story in particular I will be putting on my profile, so check that out every once in a while because it could be important. Or fun. There might even be cake. For the special test subjects.**

Once, when she'd been assigned to heavy lifting, a job she actually enjoyed and the Doctor really did not, and she was lugging a huge box of spare parts from somewhere inside the belly of the beast, she came across a room that she hadn't seen before, though she was sure she had gone the right way. The color scheme was all different from the patterns in the console room, but it looked strangely familiar. The air had the electric quality that Xan associated with the temporal disturbances.

But of course it was familiar. It _was_ the console room, wasn't it? The walls had that same funny pattern, although there was not as much color and texture that stood out. It seemed a bit less organic. But the actual console in the center had a similar look about it. It wasn't as impressive (she thought loyally), nor as large, but it was familiar nonetheless.

Oddly, strikingly familiar.

As she stared, holding the massive box awkwardly in her arms, she realized that the room was not empty. There was someone standing over in one corner, intently working a few controls. Xan, in a panic, tried to back out quietly, but the box slipped and one of the parts fell onto the floor with an uncomfortably loud noise. The man whirled around.

Some nerve in Xan's mind jarred. Then, the feeling utterly vanished, without a trace, or even a memory.

"I'm... sorry?" She had no idea what she was supposed to do, and tried to balance the heavy box on one knee.

The man tipped his head to one side, considering this. "Well, you don't _seem_ dangerous or malevolent," he said finally. He had a very deep, rich voice.

"I... I don't?" Xan stammered. "Th- that's... that's good, then, right?" She severely hoped it was. "I... I don't think I'm supposed to be here..."

The man squinted at her. "No. You don't look right."

"Because you've never seen me before in your life and the only door is over there so how did I get in?" ventured the girl.

"That may be it!" he said, surprised. "Isn't that a funny thing?"

"Quite perplexing, yes," agreed Xan. Her arms ached. "I'm _not_ dangerous or malevolent, as a matter of fact. I'm a guest here."

"Ah! Of course. You may well be. I rather think I may not have met you yet."

"You just did, though," she pointed out logically. "Right now."

This made sense to the man. "Pleased to meet you, then. I'm the Doctor." He extended a hand. Xan managed to hold up the box with one arm long enough to shake, feeling her grip on reality sliding away like a scoop of ice cream melting in the sun. The man looked nothing like the person Xan had met who called himself the Doctor. This man was older, had curly hair, and was wearing an obscenely long scarf of all colors.

The man appeared to be considering something. "Well, I don't think you're _me_..."

"Neither do I," she said frankly.

"...so then I suppose you're one of my... companions. What am I _like?_"

"Sorry?" _One of his companions?_ Xan thought, storing the information away for later.

"My _future_ self? You know? The Doctor? That is, the Doctor _you_ know?" He sounded very hopeful and worried at the same time. "Am I... _ginger?_"

"Um. No. Brown. Not curly, though. Kind of... sticking out. Maybe a little wavy."

"Oh. Oh, well. Young, then? Old? Er... male?"

"He's... younger than you are... and he's your _future_...? Yes... male... not old, thirties, maybe."

"Really? I suppose carelessly handsome is too much to ask for?"

"Um. I don't know... I'm not such a good judge of... oh, all right, yes."

"Yes to the handsome? Really?"

"I guess so," she conceded diplomatically. "If you like. Speaking objectively, of course."

"Well, that may be something to look forward to." The man who called himself the Doctor tried to peek around Xan to see what was behind her. He noticed the spare part she'd dropped and picked it up. He was about to hand it to her when he stopped. "This is just what I need! You don't think I could borrow it... borrow... maybe not the right word..."

"I don't really know if I need it or not. You can have it." Xan shifted the box again. The man took advantage of this movement to poke his head out into the hallway Xan had been walking down. Just as Xan was afraid to step into the room entirely, the man seemed unwilling to step all the way out. He peered curiously down the hallway in both directions and then quickly pulled his head back in.

"Now we have a paradox going," said Xan cheerfully. "My word, this is fun."

The man looked at her carefully. She gave him a quirky little smile. "Because that part now exists in an infinite, self-sustaining loop, right? I give it to you, and you keep it and then it ends up in this box, and sometime later I carry the box with the part here, and you take it..."

He looked at the part, a curved cross of fluid-filled tubes and circuits. "Perhaps I should leave it here, then."

"But then how will it get here?" she said shrewdly.

"Then maybe it _doesn't_ exist in an infinite loop. Have you considered that?"

"So if I give it to you, then it _always_ was a paradox, and if I don't, it _never_ was. And either one can be possible. But until I make the decision, it's _both_. So it's like Schrodinger's cat! Quantum temporo-mechanical uncertainty principle of divergent timelines!" She was showing off some of the technical terms she'd recently acquired.

The Doctor-that-was grinned broadly, but shyly. He was impressed. Xan had the faint feeling that he and the man she knew _did_ look alike. Not superficially, of course, but in small, little ways, like the shape of the smile, the way the eyes reflected light.

"You can keep the part," decided Xan. "I like paradoxes." She hefted the box once again, trying to keep it from slipping out of her grip. "Maybe I should leave."

"Well, usually this wouldn't be quite right for me but... until we meet again? Yes. That's probably most accurate. Would you care for a Jelly Baby?"

Xan thought she remembered someone telling her that you shouldn't accept candy from strangers. "Um. All right," she said, and was handed a small drop of yellow gelatin. She backed into the hallway and waited. "I expect the door will disappear when I blink." She tried it. "Uh oh." The door was still there.

"Maybe if I close the door and wait a second..." A quiet click. Another. "Oh. You're still here. I'll lock it..."

"This is bad," said Xan, when the door opened again to reveal the long-scarved man standing there, and the old console room in the background. "It's not supposed to work like this, is it?"

"No. Not as far as I know." Both of them seemed to be at a loss. Then the man brightened up. "I have an idea!" The door shut once more. Xan heard the sound of the console being turned on to full power, and a set of controls being operated quickly. The man's voice could be heard saying, "_Now_ let's see."

"I can actually _hear_ that you're still there," Xan told him, before the door opened again. "Do you have any idea of what's causing this?"

"Crossing of timelines," said the man promptly. "You're not fully actualized in space-time, and time is folding itself around you." He said it like it was a bad habit of hers.

"It's not _me_! There's this fuel... and it messes with time. _That's_ probably it."

"No, it's definitely you. I can tell."

"Isn't!"

"Of course it is. What would _you_ know about it?"

Xan decided not to argue, because if this man really was the Doctor, that would take hours. She tried putting the box on her head, but that made it ache. The same happened if she balanced it on her shoulders. It was starting to get painful. She considered putting it down, but wasn't sure if she'd be able to pick it up again.

"I have another idea," said the man brightly, and he stepped back inside the door and closed it. Xan heard the console fire up, and then there was a strange, siren-like noise... Xan tried balancing the box in her hip and reached for the door, but it opened again on its own. The Doctor stood in the space beyond.

"Xan? Are you all right? Is that too heav-?" He was young, and his hair stuck out all over the place, and he was unquestionably handsome. He was not wearing a scarf.

"Let's _not_ start this again," said Xan, and stumbled with relief into the huge console room full of coral and color. She let the box fall from her arms and collapsed on the couch.

"Well, I _have_ been making you carry these things all about, and they _are_ heavy..."

Xan leaned back and held up the tiny thing in her hand to the light. It was getting a little sticky, and was beginning to stain her palm yellow.

The Doctor noticed it, looked at the box Xan had been carrying, and looked back at Xan. He saw it, and smiled.

"Can I see that?" The Doctor took it from her and inspected it closely. Then he put it in his mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed.

"You _ate_ it!" said Xan indignantly, sitting bolt upright.

"Ate what?" He laughed. Then, to Xan's astonishment, he leaned over and gently brushed a lock of hair from her face, letting his hand linger on her temple.

* * *

><p>It all seemed like such a blur, and one moment could seem to take forever, and the next pass by almost before it happened. It got later and later. She'd been assigned to heavy lifting, a job she actually enjoyed and the Doctor really did not, and she was lugging a huge box of spare parts from somewhere inside the belly of the beast. It must have taken longer than she thought, because her arms were aching by the time she was able to put it down. Xan entered the console room with great relief, letting the box fall from her hands, and collapsed on the couch. The Doctor looked both worried and amused.<p>

"Xan? Are you all right? Was that too heav-?"

"Let's _not_ start this again," she said, annoyed at the slight to her abilities.

"Well, I _have_ been making you carry these things all about, and they _are_ heavy..."

The Doctor shrugged and stared into space, perched on the back of the couch. Then he leaned over and, to Xan's astonishment, gently brushed a lock of hair from her face, letting his hand linger on her temple. A second later he withdrew, embarrassed.

"You look tired," he said finally.

Xan sat up. "What time is it?" She looked at her watch. It was nearly quarter to seven. "Oh, no. It's late. I better go home." She stretched and got up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor staring at his hand, then rubbing it, then staring at it again. Disregarding this as another weirdness in a world of weird, she asked, "Did we ever actually get around to looking at that fuel?"

"I think we tried to, once or twice, but..."

"Garden hose," they said, at much the same time, and laughed. The Doctor stuck his hand in his pocket.

"You know, I think this might actually be done soon. I don't know why it took so long to repair. Do you want me to walk you home? Don't look at me like that, it's just common sense."

"And here I am, sitting in a time machine bigger inside than out and you tell me about common sense... I'll be okay."

"And then when the monsters start jumping out of alleyways, will you be all right then?"

Xan shrugged her coat on, and pulled her hair out from inside. The braid had come out at some point, so her hair was loose, cascading down her back. "I don't pass by any alleyways. I'm only walking from here to the bus and then a few blocks. Tomorrow's Christmas Eve. No one's _actually_ going to be asleep at seven."

"Maybe not asleep, but not sober, either. They probably won't make very good witnesses."

"My block's not so bad about that. You can walk me to the bus stop if you like. That's the only place where there's any real danger."

The Doctor decided this was probably true. "Okay. Let's go."

"But even if something like a Siren Hound did attack us, what _would_ you do?"

He opened the door, considering this. "Oh, I dunno. We run?" "It's faster than we are."

"Let it eat me first?"

"So then I get the pleasure of watching it tear you to pieces before it kills me. My life span is increased by a few highly unpleasant seconds."

"That's quite morbid." He proffered a gentlemanly arm. Xan hesitantly slipped her hand through it, and the Doctor got the feeling she had never been walked home before.

"Yes. It is. We don't want it to happen. That's mostly my point."

The glow of streetlamps barely broached the night, but set a path down through the dark. The road signs and cat's-eyes on the street shone, and the sky above had a tint closer to red than blue. The only lights in the heavens were the blinking stars of airplanes and the crescent moon's tiny smile.

"You cold?" asked the Doctor, feeling Xan shiver a little.

"Not really. It never gets as cold near a city, and every winter seems warmer than the last. And the coat's warm, too..." Xan trailed off. After a little bit, she said wistfully, "It's too bad that the city's right there. You can hardly ever see any stars."

"It's also a good thing, because it means there's an atmosphere. Which is good, 'cos you can breathe."

"Bet there's a good view on the moon."

"Yeah, it's pretty nice," said the Doctor, offhand. "Not much air, though."

"And still cold." They both laughed.

"But you can go jumping all around. One-sixth g. That's fun. And there usually isn't anyone there to laugh at you. But you have to be careful about not leaving footprints, and if you mess up anyone's flag they _really_ get on your case." He seemed to be speaking from experience. "But, honestly, that moon's just a big grey rock floating about. There are heaps of those."

Xan stared up at the big grey rock, wondering what else could be floating around the cosmos. "Well, it's a very _important_ big grey rock. Without it, we wouldn't have the tides, or even the seasons. The moon put the tilt on the Earth's axis when they collided."

"Life would have been very different here, that's true."

The bus shelter welcomed the visitors with a motion-sensor light and a bit of heat. It used them so rarely nowadays; no one came up here all that often.

Xan thought, _Different _here. _On Earth._

"That's why time travel is so dangerous. That rock that hit Earth to form the moon probably was part of an accretion disk for some distant star. If you knock an asteroid the wrong way passing through, then the moon never forms and life is entirely different on Earth. But, then again, sometimes you hit a rock and it goes and hits another rock, and nothing really changes except the rocks look different. And if life on Earth hadn't evolved the way it did, then it might not have mattered if the rock went the wrong way."

"But maybe the pattern of rocks in space is far more important in the long run than life on Earth. Who knows what's important and what's not?"

_Me. I do._ He didn't say it aloud. Not because he wanted to keep it secret. Not because he was afraid of what it might mean to Xan. He didn't say it because he wasn't too sure if it was the truth anymore.

The Doctor turned to Xan quickly. "I should probably give you my number," he said.

"Um. Okay. Good idea."

"So, you know, if you feel lonely, or you feel like something's going to chew your arm off, or anything like that, you give me a call," he went on cheerfully.

"Right. Safety first. What if it eats my phone?"

The Doctor gave Xan's phone a quick once-over with his sonic screwdriver. "Then it eats you, and you can get it back. And now, you'll get reception in there, too. Anywhere, really, except inside of dimensional rifts and... um... I think maybe near some particle accelerators."

"No, tell you what, if that happens, I'll text you my will."

"That'll either be the world record for longest text message or world record for shortest will. And speaking of world records..."

"Yes?"

"Do you realize it's been about _seven hours _since we last fought about something?"

"Five. Remember the book thing? Which I agreed _not_ to ask about?"

"That wasn't a fight! I didn't do anything!"

"Well I got angry at you and you got angry at me. There was disagreement, at least."

"I wasn't angry!"

"Weren't you?"

"No! Or... well... not at you, anyway! And this doesn't count, either."

"What about the time you sprayed me with the garden hose because I dropped a spanner?"

He had a distant look in his eyes. "That was _hilarious_... And it doesn't count."

"It was quite uncalled for."

"No. It was absolutely necessary. Safety precaution."

Xan let that one go. Her eyes were starting to hang heavy. It felt even later than seven o' clock. The last disturbance had set her back a few hours, and the day seemed to have lasted an eternity.

The bus scurried up the road and wheezed to a stop. Long after it had disappeared away again, heavier by one person, the Doctor still stood, leaning on the wall of the shelter, watching the lights of the city. Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve, and the likelihood of peril would increase exponentially. And nothing boded well. There would be danger, of course. There always had to be. And that was something you could face, something you could accept. But after that... _What happens then? What happens to me?_ The future never felt as real as it did now. And, for perhaps the first time, it felt anything but infinite. And it was as unknowable as anything ever had been.

He wondered if he'd been right to erase Xan's memory. Had it been a favor to her, or a way of protecting himself? As soon as he saw her with the little token she'd been given, he'd remembered. For her, barely ten seconds. For him, centuries. The first few days afterwards, curious about this future. Then, it had all faded, and strange things happened all the time, and it wasn't even the last time someone had sworn that he would know them in his future. He'd been more curious then about his own future than Xan's role in it, which was really typical, when he thought about it. People came and went.

It wasn't as though there _hadn't_ been curiosity about the newcomer. She really wasn't like most people, it was true. He'd seen her modest and polite, but also quick-witted. Sensible. A little bit... oh, all right. She _had _been very attractive. And she had said he was handsome... Would be. Whatever. So that would mean now... But that was ages ago. He was over _that_.

But there was that little sense of fulfillment, when he saw her with the candy and the heaping box (which he hadn't offered to help with, he remembered. Why hadn't he? He _should_ have), and there was another mystery solved. Suddenly, he was someone else entirely, an older self, watching it all with pleased satisfaction. It was very Proustian, and that's all very well and good, but then something had made him reach out and remove it from her memory. He shivered, recalling the feeling. His hand was still numb, the tips of his fingers still rubbery and frozen. Why?

The Doctor turned and made his way up the road again, each step unforeseeable, each breath wondering if the last ones were counting up or down.

**AN: Come on. You know you :)'d. I couldn't help it. Four is just so awesome. They all are. And by the way, if you've read 'The Before', one particular exchange makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?**


	18. Chapter 18

**AN: Read through carefully, so's you don't miss anything... and don't jump to conclusions, either.**

Night

Night. Simple, warm shadow. It was all she could see. Away from the bustle of the city, in the wilderness, there was only night. The sun had blazed past, and the fire had died, but the embers still burned. In the little fire pit, and dashing through the trees and, too, in the sky. The soil was almost blue from decaying matter, and the tall cycads waved at the stars, the moons, and the firefly bats flitting among the leaves. The world turned. The moons turned around it, and it danced through the asteroids, in tandem with the planets, and all of it tumbled around the great red sun.

She leaned over on her side and drew it in the blue ground with a stick. Drew the great circle of the sun, then the rippling belt, and the circles, stroke, stroke, swirling the branch on the ground, and the planets, one by one. She read the word aloud. _Frey_. Home.

She'd always loved calligraphy. Because she looked at a word, and saw a world instead. A story. She wiped the dirt clean and drew again. A circle, with prominences leaping out from it and curving back in, then another, and a flick of a wrist. This could be a solar system with two suns, spinning about each other. Three planets, with a little moon circling them. And a ship, frozen in landing. _Tefaldt_. Soft. She pictured a world of moss and blankets, with pastel sunsets and mist rising on early mornings. The ship is a casket, she thought. Someone wished to be buried there, on the soft world. Then she drew another word, twisting the stick and dotting the circle. _By'r._ Until. The speckled symbol is a nebula, she thought. And the unborn stars are waiting... until... She wrote another symbol. _Surumin._ Her favorite word. Story. It was, she thought, the most beautiful of all the words, though _woac_, the wine-red grass, was nice if basic, and _auvon_, to learn, had an angular charm none of the others seemed to, and _xan_, meaning star, was also one of those simple beauties.

She smelled the torch before it could be seen, and said, after the scent grew strong and the soft footsteps stopped, "I thought you were asleep."

"You're wanted back at..."

"I'm always wanted." She swirled her finger in the dirt. "But am I ever needed?"

"This new face of yours is stubborn as a broken circuit." He stuck the torch in the ground. It wasn't ever a good idea to go through the forest with a mere artificial light. Fire scared away the more dangerous creatures, and the smoke got rid of some of the nastier bugs.

"I've always been like that. That's not what changed." She lay on her stomach and drew the word for stubborn. _Uvet_. It was a rocky little planet and a tiny blue sun, with a comet mulishly charging at the star and slow destruction.

"Why do you _always_ run away to the forest?"

"I like it here. It makes me feel small and insignificant." She drew 'small.' _Dwla._ It wasn't a star system (that wouldn't be fitting), but a molecule. Let's see... with the shape of the electron clouds, and the position of the symbols... that could almost make it dihydrogen monoxide. Good old haitch-too-oh. Water. She drew the word for water slowly. _Maget._

"And you like _that? _What's happened to you?"

"Why not? It's true." The word for truth, _n'ri_, wasn't so attractive. Well, neither was the truth sometimes. It was usually uglier than illusions. Not in symbols, though. _Ykraid_ meant illusion, and that one was such a mess.

"All you do is sit around and draw meaningless words in dirt and stargaze!"

_Meaningless words. That's almost an oxymoron. Which is almost what you are, and all the rest of you desert-dwellers, too busy strutting around to see what things mean._

"I'm not coming."

"You have to. It's your duty."

_V'hail._ Duty. A red giant, incinerating the little inner planets as it grew. "Hearing you say that is depressing. And it's not wrong to say I learned this face from you."

"Why are you never at Council? Why do you always make such a mockery of-?"

"Same comment, same sentiment."

"This is about the fate of the entire universe!"

"Oh, what would you know about the fate of the entire universe?"

"Quite a bit, actually."

"Yes. You always think you do. Until you remember you're a part of it, too."

"Why do you always run away? That's what you're doing, isn't it? Running away?"

A chilly breeze brushed her hair. "I'm afraid," she whispered. She drew fear on the ground. _Alek_. Then she added a planet with a moon to the star system. The new word was: death.

The figure looked at the word she wrote, then knelt by her and put a tender hand on her shoulder. "I know," he said, trying not to let his hand tremble. "I know."

She buried her head in the mossy earth and wept. "So do I," she sobbed. "That's why it's so awful. I know, but I can't stop it. There's nothing I can do."

She was still crying when she finally woke up.

* * *

><p>The ragged pain lasted longer than the memory of the dream, which drifted away like the wisps of clouds on a windy day. Then it faded; slowly, it was true, but steadily, as relief took its place. Dreams aren't just sights and sounds. They come with knowledge, and their own kind of logic, and sometimes emotions too. Xan sat up in bed, letting her mind readjust to reality. It's all chemicals, she thought, wiping her eyes and her sticky cheeks. They were illusions of chemical reactions to illusions of stories. It's all made up.<p>

Xan didn't believe in dreams having psychological significance. She didn't really believe in psychology, either. It was all biochemistry, when you got down to it. If you go deeper and deeper into the subconscious, it doesn't become whimsical or vague. It actually gets closer to being hard science.

Sometimes dreams let you know what was on your mind. What you were thinking about. More often, though, Xan felt that she would dream about some idea or event or bit of knowledge she hadn't covered fully in the day's thoughts. Some unresolved idea. Or, sometimes, it just found a place for whatever was new. And then occasionally it was just the brain's way of making chop salad out of whatever's in the fridge.

Still feeling soggy inside, Xan swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for the switch to turn the wallscreen on. It was nine-forty. She didn't want to go back to sleep. This was an odd feeling. Usually she loved sleeping. She told stories as she slept, and sometimes the stories were ones she could never have conceived of awake. Out of habit, she pulled the covers over herself and lay on her side, expecting the unpleasant feeling to dissolve as she shut her eyes again.

She felt her body disappear as her mind folded inwards, then began to leak out into open ocean from the shores of sleep. Her thoughts began to unwind, and rewind of their own accord. They felt like the tiny strings that coiled in the golden fuel, and she let her mind drift along that stream of thought. She imagined her whole body turning into little glowing hairs, DNA uncoiling and breaking free, flying apart in great bursts of light...

_Trapped. Hands pounding on the glass, trying to reach through space. Pain. So much pain. Screaming, feeling the waves of terror and anger shredding her to ribbons, burning, the agony leaving, the fear rising, drowning in light... _

The shock of awakening felt like being shot in the head. Pure, condensed, concentrated, acute, and violent panic struck with the same suddenness as a bullet. Even before she could think of crying out, or gasping for air, Xan did the first thing that came to mind. She got out of bed so fast it was as though she'd felt a snake in the covers. True consciousness returned only _after_ she found herself several feet from the bed, so she woke standing up.

Feeling dizzy as all the blood rushed from her head, she made her way out of her own room and into the bathroom. Xan leaned heavily on the sink and turned on the tap. Rubbing cold water in her eyes seemed to help fight off the nausea. She braced herself on the rim of the sink and stared into the mirror.

It was not a bad face, she decided at last. It wasn't exactly beautiful, but she preferred it not to be. It wasn't ugly at all, when she really thought about it, but it couldn't be pretty. Everyone knew that being pretty was about luscious lips (how she hated the word 'luscious'! It was a disgusting word, all soft and squishy, like a slug), which she might have had if she didn't prefer them pursed into a thin line, and long eyelashes, which she _did_ have, come to think of it, but they just _grew_ that way, and were always falling into her eyes. Maybe her eyes were a nice shape, too, but they weren't nice in a _pretty_ way. Or maybe it was that they weren't pretty in a _nice _way. They looked much like the Afghan girl's eyes from the famous photograph, two speckled, fierce rainbows that averaged out to green, and they were always in deep shadow. And pretty people had thin, sculpted eyebrows, and Xan knew hers were too thick and too low.

It wasn't a sharp, thin face, but it wasn't round and fat either. In the winter, her skin grew paler and her hair darker, in summer she tanned and her hair turned chestnut. At midday her eyes looked plain and hazel, and by late afternoon, if the sky was clear and the sun still bright, they looked apple green. At night they were a rich emerald. When she woke in the early morning, her hair was in glossy waves and her skin was smooth; by the time she went out, her hair often had turned bushy but formless and her skin made fishnet patterns in the cold. If she ever had a moment when she _was_ beautiful, she reasoned, it probably wouldn't last much longer than an hour before it faded.

Xan wondered if she was being critical of her lack of beauty, or if she was trying to reassure herself that she hadn't got any. Why would anyone be comforted by that? Yet, in a strange way, she was. Certainly no one had ever seen her as attractive, she told herself. Maybe it was that it made life simpler. People took you a bit more seriously. And nothing was ever expected of you.

She drifted back into the bedroom. The room felt stuffy, and she opened a window, feeling the texture of the cold, and then shut it again. Xan sat down, careful not to nod off or let her eyes droop, and wished desperately that it was summer. She wanted to go walking. Find a meadow somewhere (this was a somewhat hazy ideal; she had no idea as to a specific place) and stargaze. Wander through the park, with only gaslights to guide her. The public safety drill sergeant surgically appended to everyone's mind said that this was probably not a good idea. But an irrational slice of her soul asked: Why is the dark so much more dangerous? I can see in the dark very well. My eyes are keen, my senses quick. The dark hides me better than the people I'm supposed to fear. The public safety drill sergeant said: it's not safe for a young woman to go wandering about. The feline creature inside her quivered with feral arrogance. Not safe for _them_, you mean. This is _my_ world. These are the streets _I_ walk. The path I walk is _mine_, and this earth is my home and those men are my people, my humankind. I am one of them, so they are _mine_ and cannot harm me. Humans have no predators, so they must only fear their equals, or nature itself.

Or is that another intricately constructed lie? Are we that alone?

She made her way down to the kitchen, checking the time on the way. It was ten thirty. She pulled a bottle of seltzer out of the refrigerator and then put it back, not feeling very thirsty. First she considered reading a book. But for the first time in her life, it didn't appeal to her. She could write... no, that meant lying down, or sitting down, and she didn't feel up to that. Xan realized she wanted something to _happen_. She didn't want to have to _make_ it happen, it just should _happen_. A puzzle of daily routine. Xan realized that she wanted to take something apart. Like a broken lock, or a runny sink. No guidelines, just whatever you could do with what you had. Total freedom, but a purpose. That was what she needed. The only way she knew how to do that was in dreams, but whatever was happening was way too far from her control. And she was definitely not tired anymore.

How did things _happen_? If _you_ didn't make it happen, and they didn't happen on their own, then how? Where was the spontaneity in life? The challenge? What did it signify with respect to your psyche if you wished for nothing less then to wake up in the middle of a crop circle with amnesia and a funny scar?

Then Xan realized how very silly it was to think like that. If she wanted an adventure, fine. She had one. She'd undergone life-threatening situations and severely disturbing lapses in reality, and spent the day fixing a time machine that was almost probably sentient. This was about as good as it got.

Xan also realized that her eyes were closed, and she was lying on the couch. She whirled to her feet and shook off the feeling frantically. It was beginning to frighten her that she would be so unwilling to fall asleep. She loved sleeping, and dreaming. Scary dreams, sad dreams, happy ones, they all made such good stories. Where was the thrill of experiencing a truly original idea, and being able to live it? It had gone.

She plucked a book from the shelf anyway and opened to a random page. She'd read every book at least twice. Xan was one of the readers of the world. A book was like a drug to her. She settled down for her fix.

And then her phone rang, somewhere up in her room. She wondered, slightly irritated, who would call anyone in the middle of the night. She grudgingly put the book down after a couple of rings and headed up. Then she thought harder. Who _would_ call her in the middle of the night?

She sprinted up the stairs, hand slapping on the banister, and flew into her bedroom. _Where_ was her _phone?_ The sound was coming from... she turned a full circle. Then she spotted her jacket draped over a chair, and a light inside it. Xan dove for the cell phone, and pulled it out just in time.

Then she suddenly couldn't think of what to say. She waited.

"Hello?"

"Doctor?" She pumped her fist in the air, silently whispering _yes!_

There was a laugh from the other end. "I heard that."

She hoped he couldn't hear her turning red, too. "It's the middle of the night, Doctor." Xan felt it was her civic duty to point this out to him.

"Oh. Yeah. Right. Sorry for waking you up."

"No, it's all right. I was up anyway. I couldn't sleep."

"So..."

"So?"

"Well, it's finished. Repairs and everything."

"That's... good job..."

"So..."

"_So?_"

"I hope you aren't too tired..." Xan heard a deep mechanical hum in the background.

"No. No, I was actually... feeling a little _bored_, so no..."

"'Cos... I was thinking... of maybe taking a little test flight, to see if it's really working..." Xan heard him take a deep breath. "I want to show you something... incredible." The call ended. She slowly lowered the phone and turned it off.

Outside, through the open window, Xan heard soil and dead leaves rustling. Then, faintly at first but growing in intensity: something a bit like a siren, pulsing, and then a _shunk_. She heard a wooden door creak open, and footsteps, and there was a quiet rap on the windowpane over the front door.

Her eyes widened. Xan grabbed a shirt and a pair of pants at random from inside her dresser and pulled off her flannel pajamas. In less than ten seconds' time, she hurried downstairs, fully clothed, tying the laces of her sneakers mid-hop, and tentatively opened the front door. Off to one side, the man was lounging, half-standing, half sitting on the railing of the little porch. The Doctor withdrew his hand from the unlit Christmas lights hanging over his head and slid off the banister. "That was fast," he said, mildly impressed. "I thought you'd take longer getting dressed."

Xan still had her pajamas draped over her arm. Throwing them onto the couch, she opened the door a little wider. "How do you mean?"

"Well, you have to pick out clothes..." As soon as he said this, Xan looked down at herself. She hadn't, but didn't have enough variety in her wardrobe for it to make a difference. _Why would it matter what I wore?_ she thought naively. _Are we going someplace really cold? _"... and you have to wash up and all..."

"Yeah, I did that before I went to bed. Which wasn't that long ago."

"... 'n' hair..."

Her hair was loose, and, it being night, nature's joke on Xan caused it to be wavy and seemingly styled. "_Hair_? You mean this?" She ran a hand through it as if she had never noticed it before. "Oh. This just happens to my hair at night. Funny, right?"

As far as the Doctor had heard, women take a long time getting themselves ready for this sort of thing. He didn't say this, because this didn't appear to be actually the case, and he didn't want to seem ignorant of the ways of women. He also mildly suspected Xan of getting ready beforehand, in expectation of his calling. In truth, Xan sometimes _did_ take a long time to get ready (more because she sat around reading than because she was attending to her appearance), but the more important something was, the less time she took to prepare for it. It seemed _logical_ to her to do things this way.

"Well, _I_ thought you'd take longer getting here," said Xan, who was, like many women, completely unaware of what men thought women were like.

"Ah." He reached up and touched one of the unlit lights absently. The miniscule filament ignited, and the light glowed green. Xan stared at it. The Doctor gave her a grin and flicked the light gently. The light shut off once more.

"Can I use the bathroom first?" said Xan, feeling silly as she said it. "You can come in if you like."

The Doctor settled himself down on the small sofa and waited. The living room, like the rest of the house, was not very large. It contained old-fashioned furniture that looked like it was bought from a garage sale, and at the same time had very modern items, like the fiber optic curtains, which were glowing cornflower blue, and the plants, which were in hanging chrome pods. If someone had a little bit of money but few to no actual possessions to furnish a new home, the patchwork, fanciful style in Xan's house would be what could result. There was no television, but parts of the walls were touch-sensitive screens that functioned in a similar way to a dashboard on a computer. The coffee table frame looked ancient, but the cover was a recycled mosaic of sea glass. The fluffy rug was what was known as a scrapyard carpet, which was made from processed plastics and Styrofoam. There was quite a lot of recycled glass, actually. The floor lamp had a neck of bottle green, there were graceful sculptures of glass in vases, like flowers, and even the cover on the sofa was made of glass fabric, a new invention to use up the mounds of non-biodegradable glass in the landfills. Very eco-friendly. The eclectic style somehow gave the room a kind of odd charm that you didn't find with more lived-in homes. Much like Xan herself. She didn't seem to be a very lived-in person.

There were sheets of paper buried under an atlas. The Doctor moved the book aside and read the words that were neatly written on the page. A poem. And below it, another. Some of the poems were only half-finished, others looked like they had been revised many times over. He picked up one that was at the very bottom and read the last few lines, then moved back to the top of the page. The Doctor was able to read quite fast, and he managed to finish the poem before Xan returned from the upstairs bathroom.

It was titled, _Study in Light Black_.

Xan came down the stairs, one arm through the sleeve of a jacket. The Doctor shoved the poem underneath the stack and stood up.

"You ready?" he asked.

"Could be." She pulled her jacket down from a hook and stuffed her arms into it, then opened the front door and stepped off the porch, onto the sidewalk. The thin crust of snow laid down the previous night had melted under pedestrian traffic and survived only in small pockets and frosting the boughs of trees. "Where...?"

There was the soft sound of... emptiness. Xan turned around sharply. There was no one behind her.

Wind blew down the street. The soft haloes around the streetlamps turned them all celestial: two straight rows of moons, casting dozens of shadows that ringed the solitary figure like petals around a flower. Xan spun slowly on her heels, craning her neck, and she drifted into the middle of the road. "Where are you?" she whispered thoughtfully. The road was empty: cars rarely traveled down residential streets at this time of night.

The breeze was picking up. The trees creaked as they swayed gently, bare limbs shedding snow, which swirled back and forth, and the fresh and frosty air drove soft needles of cold through fabric and into the bare skin beneath. Xan lifted her gaze up to the heavens, and thought she saw movement. Something dark, flashing and spinning through the clouds. There was a feeling of hot wind, and the echoing whistle of descent, the _whrumm_ of an engine, and light that left a streak across her retina, bolting like lightning from the firmament. Xan whirled around, and astonishment stole her voice clear away.

The Doctor contrived to look nonchalant, leaning in the doorframe of his police box, tipped slightly askew. The TARDIS hovered in midair about five feet from the pavement, bobbing gently. The siren light atop it was glowing like a star.

"Won't anyone notice?" Xan laughed, exhilarated, when she remembered how to speak. "You're in the middle of the road!"

"Oh, don't worry about that!" the Doctor called over the sound of the engine. "Where's your sense of fun?"

Displaced air buffeted Xan's hair in gusts, casting it back into dark hazel snakes that writhed behind her. She remembered the alleged perception filter. Of course, she had no proof that it existed, but if anyone actually saw a... what was it, twentieth century?... police box hovering in the road, then they probably would assume that they were dreaming. Behind the Doctor, Xan caught a glimpse of the console room. For the first time, she saw it clean and whole. "Nice ride!" she grinned.

"Care for a spin?"

"Well, do you really think I'd let you fly off without me?"

"Good answer!" The TARDIS swooped forward, and the Doctor reached out, and caught her by the hand. She ran, jumped, felt her feet touch floor, and then acceleration squeezed at her gut as the ground fell away.

**AN: It actually _was_ a date up until the point where Xan didn't get that it was. ;) Because that's how she rolls.**


	19. Chapter 19

The first time Xan had traveled on an airplane hadn't been long ago. The memory had faded, but she still could recall commandeering a window seat, and pressing her face to the glass as the plane took off. No doubt the passengers were embarrassed to see her, looking almost too old for high school, with her forehead stuck to the tiny pane like a seven-year-old. But she hadn't cared back then. There had been people, hadn't there? Waving at the plane departing, even after Xan couldn't see them anymore, but she knew they were still waving. She had never flown before then.

She hadn't ever flown until now. Being on a plane, that wasn't flying. You had a solid floor beneath you, and a dependable cushion of lift below that. There were reclining seats and stewardesses and there was calm, stuffy, pressurized air.

Xan hung on tight to the doorframe, leaning out as far as she dared as the mat of streets slid below her. There was a bubble of warmth that went several inches out from the inside of the TARDIS; any limb that was extended beyond it began to turn numb in seconds. It was like swimming through arctic waters, the wind chill dropping the temperature like a barometer in a thunderstorm, but the friction of movement was so great that the air thawed as it froze. Xan reached one arm out, and the speeding air scuttled up her sleeve like a fish. Her heels were firmly resting on the floor, but the tips hung over the edge. Something in her chest was leaping and twisting with the movement.

The city passed underneath.

Though the roar of wind blotted out all sound, Xan could hear the Doctor standing behind her. He gave her a nudge, proud as a peacock. It was as though he had not only taken her flying, but invented the machine that flew her, invented the idea of flying itself. It was as though he had carefully set up the laws both of gravity and of human desire to break it, given her the eyes to see with, the mind to understand it with, the life to live it in; created the Earth and the sky and the night and the city below, so that she could be here now, flying.

Maybe he had. Who could know?

Xan turned to the Doctor. "If you say anything like, 'Scared of heights?' or 'Too much for you?'," she shouted, quivering with adrenaline, "I'll push you off! I swear I will!"

The eyebrow came up. His eyes sparkled. There are some people in the multiverse who love a challenge. "Not _that_ terrifying, I expect," he said, with an evil glint in his eye.

There are some people in the multiverse who will never let anyone one-up them. They will never play along with a practical joke. They will never let anyone have it their way in a conversation. And they are not afraid to tempt the sadists of the world to rise to the challenge. Xan laughed with manic bravado. "Terrifying? Not a chance!"

"How about breathtaking?"

"Plenty of air up here, Doctor."

"Exhilarating, then?"

"Maybe a little exciting."

"Incredible?"

"Oh, it's fairly believable."

"Fantastic?"

"It's no less mundane than hang-gliding. Which is probably very fun and believable, too."

Xan wasn't just playing with matches here. She was stomping energetically on the tail of a tiger. "_You_," said the Doctor emphatically. "You are just _asking_ for it."

"Yes!" she whooped. "I am!"

It was a dare that could not be turned down. The Doctor wheeled around and dove for the console. The TARDIS picked up speed and altitude. The air grew colder and swifter. Xan clung to the doorframe, but turned around to watch the Doctor working over the controls. The great blue column began to light up, and what looked like a piston inside it pumped faster, the siren-like sound forming in the air. She began to move inside, closing the door behind her.

"Oh, no you don't," he said, running back to the her and flinging the doors open wide. "You asked for it, remember?"

She couldn't step back inside. The Doctor blocked the way. Xan defiantly leaned out as far as she could, her shoulders dipping out of the bubble, which she found was expanding. Now it fully encased her. The air felt electric. The shadowed ground beneath her seemed to be rippling, or maybe the space between her and the ground was. What speed she had felt before was doubling, tripling, squaring in her gut, but not to her eyes. The rippling air folded together around them, and night turned into light, and there was the feeling of racing through a tunnel as the ship rocketed up. In one long moment, the ripples flattened out again, and they were cold and black. The light faded.

There was no city. There was no sky. There was no night, in the sense that night could not be, because there never was a day. There was no wind rushing by. There was no air. There was no light save for the stars, and the sun peeping out from behind the magnificent blue Earth rolling below her ever so gently through space.

* * *

><p>Orbit<p>

A million moments of eternity passed without any meaning. The Earth drifted by, white clouds stippling the atmosphere, and familiar green and brown continents turned underneath them. Half of the orb was shrouded by night, and the lights of the cities and the people in them sparkled, delicate as cobwebs, bright as stars. The stars themselves did not shine, or twinkle as they did in Earth. In space, without an atmosphere to scatter light, they were mere points. The sun washed over the world, and it, too, lacked the aura that it usually wore. And just along the edge between the light and the dark, Xan knew, without being able to see them, that there were thousands of people looking up at the sky, emerging from their beds and watching the sun rise.

There was no winter. The seasons existed only on Earth. Up in orbit, you saw winter and you saw summer, but there was not a one that meant anything more than a place. And days meant nothing too. You could be today, and you could fly around the Earth to go visit yesterday, or the other way to catch a glimpse of tomorrow. _Time is space,_ Xan thought. _Space is time._

Then, _I'm in space. I'm in SPACE._

The Doctor had silently come up behind her, and was leaning on the door, his ankles crossed. Xan watched him as he was slowly consumed by stillness. In his eyes... it didn't seem possible, didn't make sense... _longing?_

"It's quite a place, isn't it?" he said at last, low and quiet.

Xan lifted her eyes to the stars, and let them fall again on the great sphere. There was an unfamiliar feeling stroking the edges of her mind. It mixed in with pride, swelling up like a great intake of breath. It was something she had read about, but never believed she would know for her own. _Of all things_, Xan thought dizzily, _I think I may be falling in love. With a planet! With Earth!_ The idea was so ridiculous and lovely at the same time. But why not? It was practically alive. Unpredictable, but dependable. Full of mystery and surprises, but as ordinary as a brick. Beautiful. Ancient.

Suddenly very alert, Xan gave the Doctor a sharp stare. _And it isn't just me..._ the back of her head whispered.

"Quite a place," she agreed. _If I were a traveler from another world,_ she thought, _and I saw this... blue, and green, and all lit up at night... would I know? Would I recognize life? But when I did... what would I think? Joy,_ she realized,_ oh, what joy, to see a blue sister living out in the cosmos. Joy to find a fellow in the cold darkness. Why do people hate one another? How can you hate anything at all? Why can't we just be glad that we are not... alone?_

There was no way of saying it aloud. Xan struggled for words. She wished just to be understood, for once. Wanted to know that there _was_ a connection, that people didn't just live encased in their skulls, apart and alone.

Everyone? Or is it...

Maybe it's just...

_Me_?

"It looks back," Xan burst out, confident and awake and alive. "Like a person. Like a friend. It sees you looking, when you look at it. Looking at the moon, at the stars, at the sun. Earth is always watching the sky. And now... I look at it... and it's looking back!" It had all made sense, for a single moment. Xan knew what she was saying probably sounded like nonsense, but who cared? What did it matter that no one knew what she meant? It was enough to know that they heard her say it.

"It's sentient, you mean."

"Yes! It's... alive! A living world. To think that I lived there... I'm losing my mind! I really am! I'm alive, from Earth! I'm proud of it! Proud to be alive! Proud to be from Earth! And crazy! I'm crazy! Unpredictable! Random! Alive!" She felt like she could cry with relief. "_HELLO, EARTH!_" she yelled, lifting a hand in greeting, waving to the world, laughing, utterly shameless. The sound disappeared into the void, without an echo.

Where had she been, all this time? Where had this other girl been hiding? Xan had been a shadow, a silhouette. Now she was shining with life and youth. The Doctor waved too, caught up in her happiness. "Hallo there!" he shouted. "And _you're welcome_, by the way!"

If Earth heard him, it granted him only dignified silence.

"It _is_ good to be alive, isn't it?" he said, leaning out of the door.

"Alive and crazy. I could do worse."

"Hello Earth," whispered the Doctor, finding that he meant it. "And," he said, "goodbye for now."

The door swung shut.

Xan had recognized the controls for flight. They were bunched together in relatively the same area, though occasionally it was necessary to reach all the way across the console, quite a feat of agility. But these new controls, the buttons and switches and indescribable other devices, they were scattered all about. It didn't look like the TARDIS had been designed to be flown by one person. But it fit the Doctor like a glove.

The tall blue pump in the center rose and fell. The floor rocked back and forth, or maybe whatever gravity was being generated did. Before, Xan had felt a sense of displacement, but that was nothing compared to this.

"Where are we going now?" Xan asked, gripping a slab of coral. _What could possibly be more exciting than orbit...? OH! NO WAY!_

"Oh, a few billion light-years away. Nothing too..." he leaned all the way over on his stomach and turned a tiny wheel. "...extraordinary."

"_No!_ You're _joking!_"

"Maybe exaggerating a mite."

The shaking slowly stopped, and the Doctor pulled the piston to a halt with a lever. The landing was more complex than taking off, it seemed, which made sense to Xan. It used some of the same controls as the takeoff, and a few she had learned to recognize, but otherwise she was clueless as to how it was done. Which set off a steely determination in her to find out. _Later,_ she thought. _Later. First... _The power slowly died.

"Go on." He pointed at the door.

"Where are we?"

"Very far away."

She pressed the handle. The TARDIS doors opened, and Xan took a step forwards. Her shoes left prints in the shining sand, which crunched underfoot, much like snow. Where there was not sand, there was stark, smooth rock, and soft... soil? It was still night, but only by definition. The sky was flooded with lights, and three massive moons, not silver, but red and gold and green, were lifting up from the horizon. One of them had rings.

The unfamiliar air sparkled. Xan's lungs latched onto the oxygen, but very cautiously. It felt quite unlike the air she knew. There was a warm wind throwing handfuls of silica into the night, carrying a fresh scent with it. The gravity was quite low, and the dust fell slowly. Below, extending beyond an outcropping of dark igneous crystal, was a great shining plain, dotted with columns of rock. And from horizon to zenith, Xan could see dozens, no, hundreds of shooting stars, yellow and red and green and violet streaks.

There was no familiar band of the Milky Way striping the sky. There was no Big Dipper, no Southern cross, or Orion, or Winter Triangle.

It was all so... _alien_.

"No central stellar mass," said a voice behind her. "No solar system. It gets heat from its core, light from the stars. What could be called a rogue planet. But it stays inside the nebula." The Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver up as he came to stand beside her. It emitted a tiny blue thread of light, like a laser, and pointed at a barely visible spark. "Sol," he said. "Your sun. Somewhere in there, anyway. That's the Milky Way."

"This is real," Xan breathed, eyes glazing over, swaying slightly. "It's real." She sounded as if she doubted it.

"Yes, sometimes that's a tricky one. Not everyone can spot that."

"I'd know if I was dreaming, right?"

"Apparently if you cross your eyes, you can tell if something is real or a hallucination. A hallucination won't double when you have your eyes crossed."

Xan had far too much dignity to try this while someone was watching. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

><p>Considering that the Doctor had all the universe of planets to pick from, it wasn't surprising that the world was so perfect. Xan lay on her back on a soft, choice spot and watched the sky wheel overhead, the moons wandering across the stars. The planet was small and turned fast, and so the stars moved quite visibly. Her coat was bunched up to serve as a pillow, and she rested her head in her hands. The night was warm, there was a slight breeze. The sky was full of flecks of light, and Xan was lying on the sands of another planet, with her eyes blinking away stardust. So, basically, she was in heaven.<p>

"Why does it feel so warm? It can't be just the live core. That won't heat the crust like this. It should feel like winter."

The Doctor sat next to her, arms hugging his knees. "The crust is very thin. Look at this sand. Look at those rocks."

"Obsidian, right. Basalt, too? Igneous. I bet there's a lot of volcanic activity."

"Just like Earth, when it was young. Right. And there's quite a bit of radiation heating the crust from the outside. This is a stellar nursery, after all."

She followed a shooting star falling across the sky. "That explains why there's so many meteors. Space isn't really empty here, is it?"

"A bit dusty, yeah."

After a long while, Xan asked, sitting up on one elbow, "So where exactly are we?"

"Well, it's hard to describe if you haven't learned an intergalactic coordinate system..." (The Doctor knew as soon as he said this that Xan was promising herself she would.) "Some people call this planet the Eye of Orion."

"That's an Earth name. And Western. Orion is Greek."

"Earth _is_ a very dominant culture. Humans like _naming_ things, too. Everything has to have a _name_. So the Earth names stick."

Xan didn't ask. She was afraid to be disappointed. But he would know, wouldn't he? If he could go anywhere in space and time... what would be the benefit of that unless there was more out there than just... But there was soil here, and that meant...

"Why me?" she asked finally. It was a fair question, she thought.

"Er. Why not?"

"Why not what?"

"Well, I'm... not sure. Don't _you_ know?"

"Oh yes, that's right... why did you decide to tell me everything? Show me all this?"

"I didn't _decide_ to tell you anything. Most of it you figured out on your own."

"I was just guessing. You didn't have to confirm it."

"Tell me if I'm wrong... you probably would have kept at it until you found out, right? So I was saving myself a lot of trouble."

"You didn't have to take me here, though. I mean... I'm _glad_ you did. Really. This is... incredible. And wonderful. But if you..."

"Aw, come on. Don't be a cynic."

"I'm not! But now I feel like I owe you..."

"Not because I saved your life? Because of this?"

Xan lay back down and tried to imagine a new set of constellations. Somehow all the shapes she could make were trapezoids. Her imagination had reached the end of the universe. "I _do_ owe you," she said, sighing sharply.

"You," replied the Doctor smugly, "and the rest of the multiverse. Don't feel bad."

The ship over London. Make that ship_s_. The robotic creatures. And not just that. She was sure there was more, and not all over holidays.

"I imagine so," she said slowly. "But a lot of people were hurt, too."

As soon as she said it she wanted to bite her own tongue off. He didn't appear to be offended, but his features creased with sorrow.

"Most of the time... yes. But then there's the day when... everybody lives. You have to hope."

Xan got up without a sound and sat, cross-legged, beside him.

She said nothing, merely poured sand from one hand to another, head bowed. Then she brushed a finger through the silt - it would be silly to call it _earth_ - making swirling patterns in it. She looked behind her and began to sketch in the sand with a thick paper clip for a stylus. Somehow, she always found a paper clip in her pockets. She believed that she put them there without any conscious thought. She liked to fiddle with things, and sometimes she found herself with a couple of paper clips in her hands. Then, all of a sudden, they were gone, and she promptly forgot about them. She assumed that she put them down, but what ended up being the case was that she put them in her pockets without actually realizing it. Maybe she went around collecting paper clips in her sleep. If she could find them, she also would collect rubber bands and hair bands. Anything she tended to idly pick up and futz with seemed to end up in her pockets. Thankfully this didn't extend beyond office supplies. She abhorred thievery, and it would have been unpleasant to find out that your hands had kleptomania when your brain was perfectly innocent and law-abiding.

After a minute, the Doctor peeked at what she was drawing. It was not a bad portrait of his TARDIS. As an afterthought, Xan drew a giant toothy thing looming over it, with angry eyebrows and a speech bubble clamped between its teeth like a cigar with the word '_grawwrrr_' enclosed in it. It seemed to be a necessity in completing the picture. The r's drooped down the side of the speech bubble as she ran out of room. Xan swiped out the '_grawwrrr_' and wrote '_om nom nom_' in its place.

"You took your time telling me everything, though," Xan went on. "You didn't trust me."

"Well, I do meet a lot of..." He pointed at the picture. "I _should_ be careful. I'm not, usually, but I should be."

A mildly horrified art critic of a wind blew the sand back into blankness and erased the picture.

"But you weren't that cautious. I _know_ you aren't stupid, and I don't think you're careless, either. You wanted me to know, but you didn't tell me."

"I wanted... maybe I wanted to see if you could figure it out. If you could, then you deserved to know. If you couldn't, you'd have been safer not knowing anything."

"A test. Very sly."

"Although it's so much more fun to tell scientists, so I really had to restrain myself. You're all so excitable. And you're not just a scientist. You're an archeologist."

"So?"

"To a time traveler, archeology is a joke."

Xan gave him a knowing smile. "But aren't they pretty much the same thing?" She thought for a moment, then nodded and her body language shifted slightly, to become slightly more refined and graceful. Before the Doctor could argue, she spoke again, and her voice had changed. Words were her strength, and her sincere, delicate oratory had been honed to an art. "In a way, archeology _is_ a form of time travel, and a fairly ingenious one at that. As a time traveler, you have to respect the patterns of history- not just human events, but something more material and tangible, a clear record. A time traveler has to make sure that the record is not disturbed. Am I right?"

The Doctor nodded, mesmerized by the sound of her voice. "Exactly," she went on, gently acknowledging him with a small gesture. "Humans study the past in the only way they can, but they at least recognize the importance of the past. Time travel as a vehicle for science or discovery can't be invasive, so what it really is about is observation. Seeing what happens, what will happen. Seeing _how_ it happens, and _why_. That's archaeology. We don't have a word for the material study of the future yet, but it's just another side of the same coin, right? What's the difference between past and future? Depends on where you stand."

Her audience of one was utterly captivated. It wasn't just _what_ she said, but the way she said it. Every word was spoken with quiet conviction, yet somehow suffused with the most raw emotion. There was a rhythm to her intonation, as steady as the turn of the Earth, or the pulse of the seasons, or the rolling tide. The Doctor realized that it was almost like a song. She kept perfect pitch as she spoke, even if it didn't cover the same range as in music.

"In archaeology, we observe, we analyze, and we draw conclusions on what might have been. What would you do if you were actually _in_ the past, experiencing it as the present? The same thing, right? Only you'd call it forensic science, not archeology. Or anthropology. Or social science. But they all become archeology in time. Our present is another time's future. You could even say that archeology is where people from the future study the present. Or, colloquially, time travel. Time travel of the mind."

Xan waited, a little shyly, to discover how her miniature lecture was received. She was pleased with the way it had come out, but didn't actively pursue any praise.

The Doctor was having trouble finding his voice. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. Finally he managed to piece his thoughts together and work out how things like vocal cords and tongues operated.

"You," he gasped out. "Me. Travel. Together. Time and space. Ah. Um. Would-you-like-to?"

"I... wait, what?" The words had passed through her mind without any meaning being gleaned from them. They seemed terribly important, though.

"After... everything gets fixed up with this fuel, and all... obviously... you could... you could, well..." _I can't believe I'm doing this again... I promised myself I wouldn't... but it's just that... these people... so utterly impossible and fantastic... humanity..._

"I... do you mean...?"

"Yes! Yes! Haven't you ever wanted to see what ancient Athens looked like? Or a supernova? Or the farthest reaches of the galaxy?" The Doctor caught her shoulders. "Did you ever wonder what really happened at Roanoke? What it feels like to walk on the moon? Or Mars? Or here? Or a thousand years in the future?"

A word seemed to be quivering on the tip of her tongue. "_Dinosaurs_," she suddenly whispered, almost guiltily. The longing in her voice was unmistakable.

"Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous! Take your pick!" he laughed. "All the craziest things you've ever dreamed about! You like science fiction?"

"Like it? I _breathe_ it!"

"Well, it isn't fiction with me!"

Xan felt that her face would split from smiling.

"Travel the stars! Save the world!"

"Dangerous?"

"Without question."

"All right!"

"Did I mention aliens!"

Xan grew quiet. "_Did_ you mention aliens?"

He nodded.

"They're real?" she breathed. "_Really_ real?"

The Doctor leaned forward and whispered something in her ear.


	20. Chapter 20

For a moment Xan stood frozen, and then she whispered, "_You mean it?_" with so much emotion that many people would want to back away before answering, in case they'll be hit by shrapnel of happiness.

He took her hand with a smile and gently pulled it forward, guiding it towards the left side of his chest. Xan swallowed as she felt, through the fabric, the unmistakable pulse of a heart beating. She moved her hand to the right side. The same. _Perfect symmetry_,she thought. _There's one place where humans lack it_ _physiologically_. _Two lungs, two eyes, two arms, legs, kidneys, ears, brain hemispheres. But only one_...

"Oh. My god. Oh my _god_. You're... you... all this time... I didn't _know_," she whispered, as if afraid she had committed an inexcusable social crime. "I _hoped_... just that, though, nothing more... that maybe..." Then she pulled herself together and sat, her fingers making a steeple over her chin. The Doctor lay back and stared at the sky.

"So what are you, if not human?"

"Something called a Time Lord."

Xan shivered all of a sudden. She gazed at the plain that stretched out over the world. The world... right now those words meant very little. Thoughts gathered slowly.

"What does that mean? What does it mean, to say that I am human and you are not?" She sifted sand through her fingers. "Who are you?"

"It's a long story."

"I like stories," Xan said. "And we've got all the time in the universe."

The Doctor sat, legs crossed, and clasped his hands together. "Well," he said finally, pulling his knees up and watching the stars, "It's not like the usual story. It's hard to put together... because... there is no beginning."

The astral wind blew the sand into sparkling waves that twinkled down gently.

"There is no beginning. Just get that, right from the start, 'cause that's what you need to start with. Start in the middle, because that's all there is..."

Xan listened as he spoke.

"So there is no end. No beginning. Right? Wrong. I'd know. I've seen it. Every second of it. That's who I am.

"...You know... you know how when you dream, you know exactly what's going to happen...?"

She nodded. It was the one place where time meant nothing. Is that what it means to see all of time? Is the whole world like a dream to him? When she met his gaze for a moment, she saw once more the impossible reflections smoldering in his eyes, and knew now that they were real.

"...That's me. Every day, every hour... It's night, and you're staring up at the sky..." he pointed up. "...you see a flash of fire..." as a blaze of light burned brightly in the heavens. "What happen if you wish that star never fell?

"I happen. That's what. 'Cos that's who I am."

Then he laughed. "Actually it was. Literally. That was me, right there. That falling thing you saw. And so now, here I am."

"Here you are," she echoed. Then she thought for a moment and asked, "If you're from another planet, somewhere way off in the other side of the universe, then how come you look like a human?"

"Why do _you_ look like a Time Lord?"

"And why are those two questions nearly identical?" retorted Xan, who didn't let people dodge her questions, even if they _were_ aliens.

This answer befuddled the Doctor. You didn't expect something like that as a response. Usually being cryptic made people feel inferior, so they let up. "Convergent evolution," he said coolly.

"Don't pull that on me," said Xan Russell, paleogeneticist. "Do a bird's wings look _anything_ like a butterfly's wings?"

"You don't realize how successful bipedalism is..."

"But _everything_ looks the same. Relative proportions of body parts. Bone and muscle arrangement." But when she looked again, she saw that there was something slightly different about the way his cheekbones curved below his eyes... or was it the way the creases on his palms didn't really match what you'd expect... or the texture of his skin...? The pattern of veins on his wrists? The shape of his shoulder blades? The way he moved, which was just a little more fluid that normal? His smell, even? Tiny, almost imperceptible changes. Good ones, mostly. Enough to make him attractive, handsome. Now Xan realized why. Humans, since they often look alike, are very keenly aware of, in particular, facial structure. The Doctor looked human enough to pass off as one, but people did notice he was different. They just misinterpreted it. The resemblance _was_ too strong to be the result of random evolution, though. "Homologous structures," Xan said uncertainly.

"Analogous," he insisted.

"But just because you have a few different organs doesn't make you a different species! Some people have an appendix. Some don't. Some have _mammary_ _glands_. Some don't! Pretty big differences."

"Yeah, but that's not all..."

"There'd be some pretty big anatomical differences between me and you even if you _were_ human. That is... you _are_ male, right?"

"Do I _look_ like a girl?" demanded the Doctor, offended.

"Do you have to? You're _not_ human. How should I know what the egg-bearing gender looks like? Unless you _bud_ or something, like a medusa."

"I don't! Well... not usually, anyway!"

"Not... _usually_?"

"It was only once! And it's entirely unique! A statistical anomaly. Yes, I am _male_, thank you for asking!"

"So now suppose that... I don't know... let's say we both go entirely insane and end up married..."

"_What_?"

"Hypothetically."

"Why are we getting married all of a sudden?"

"It's _hypothetical_. But say that happened and..."

"No offence, but..."

"It's _biology_," pleaded Xan. "I'm talking about the definition of a species. _Biology._"

"Oh, good. For a second there I thought you were talking about matrimony..."

"That was a euphemism," she snapped. "I was talking about offspring."

The Doctor looked scandalized. "I hardly know you!"

"It's a _thought experiment_!" Xan wailed, as she began to realize this was a lost cause. "You can do whatever you like in a thought experiment!"

"I don't really want to know what you think about, then."

"Look, if Einstein imagined riding a beam of light-"

"Yeah, but he didn't mean it _that_ way..."

"_Someone else_, then!" Xan bawled, at the end of her tether. "Go marry someone else! Not _me!_ Please _don't_! Anyone else! Just _not me! _Anyone but me!"

A pause. "Well... that isn't very _nice_." He looked hurt.

"The definition of a species is a group of individuals in which all possible mating pairs can produce fertile offspring," said Xan stiffly. "That was what I was getting at. If a Time Lord and a human can produce fertile offspring, then they are members of the same species, regardless of evolutionary differences."

"That's all?"

"_Yes_."

"Oh." He said it with theatric disappointment. "Right. Yes. Of course."

"You," said Xan, with great dignity, "are a buffoon."

The Doctor rubbed an ear contemplatively. "No one's ever called me that," he said finally, "And I've _been_ to the seventeenth century."

"More fool them, then." She lay down on her makeshift pillow and gave him the Evil Eye. Then she turned on her side, facing away from him.

After a little while, she rolled over onto her back. The Doctor gave her a patient grin. With a huff, she went back to lying on her side.

Minutes passed. "Aren't you tired?" Xan demanded, still on her side.

"I don't need to sleep."

"No wonder you're so weird." It was a childish thing to say, but she didn't care.

"My sleeve of care is very raveled, yes."

Xan acknowledged this by not making a snide comeback, which was high praise.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you," the Doctor said innocently. "We can still just be friends."

Xan rolled over. "I will kill you," she vowed. "Right. Now."

"Domestic abuse!" crowed the Doctor.

"First I'll throw sand in your eyes," she said murderously. "Then I'll blow your ear out with your sonic screwdriver. Then I'll..."

"What a shame. Such a great loss. Well, I must die, then so be it." He spread his arms in a gesture of self-sacrifice.

Xan hauled off and punched him in the stomach. It was a friendly punch, in that it didn't break any ribs, and might not even leave a bruise.

"Ow," he squeaked, doubling over to protect his abdomen. "Whydidyoudothat?"

It looked a lot less like pain and a lot more like mirth to Xan. She poked him in the stomach again, experimentally, before he could stop her. The Doctor shied back, trying to control the spasms of laughter. "Don'tdothat," he gasped, eyes wide. He seemed as surprised as she was by his reaction.

_Oh god,_ Xan thought. _He's ticklish._

She thought that this merited some time alone, to think things over. Xan picked up her jacket and wandered off while the Doctor got a grip on himself, finding another soft area to lie down on. The sky still turned, and she watched it with interest. Stars fell around her, lulling her to sleep. She fought it at first, but the inexorable turn of the planet put a constant pressure on her mind to relax.

In a short while, she heard footsteps, and then the Doctor lay down beside her with a thump.

"Hi," he said. Xan looked up at the sky and tried not to laugh. _Just like a puppy_, she thought. "Nice night, huh?"

"It's beautiful."

"It gets better. In about a half an hour, a big ol' cloud of radiation hits the ionosphere. All the particles get all churned up by the magnetic field, burn up in the atmosphere. Just wait."

"An aurora," she translated. "How do you know this?"

"I've seen it before," he said calmly. "About ten miles from here over that way. And seven miles that way. And oh, maybe a couple of miles up that way."

"It's that good? That you would see it three times?"

"Now it's four. Or more, depending on what I decide to do in the future."

"So if I go up that way and walk for a couple of miles, I'd meet you?"

"Yep."

"Isn't that a little dangerous? Wouldn't that mess up the space-time continuum?"

"It would have," he said, "if you had done it. But you didn't. I'd have remembered if you did."

She stood up. "I'm going to do it."

"Gods help us all," murmured the Doctor. "Tell me I said hi, will you?"

She took a few steps. "Here I go."

"See you in a few hundred years before now."

"A few_ hundred?_"

"I'm nine hundred and five," said the Doctor casually. "Years. Earth years."

Xan sat back down. "Wow. That's... _old_."

"For a human."

"It's like... _Yoda_ old," she mused.

"Just about, yeah."

"And not always with the same face, hmm?"

The Doctor stared. "You weren't supposed to remember that!" _How did she... it didn't even... it works on _everybody_, no matter how special their brain! Even Donna... _

"No?"

"I... er... ah... nothing."

"Oh, don't worry. The memory was certainly... pushed back a little. I mean, you have psychic paper. It wasn't so much of a stretch to imagine something more... direct. But don't try anything like that again, please."

"Well, it doesn't seem like it would work, anyway! I should have known, though. I _still_ can't feel anything in these fingers!" He held them up.

"Not my fault."

"Yes your fault," he said indignantly. "What did you do to my hand?"

"I really don't know. You said some people had an immunity to psychic deception."

"Yes. But only to a certain degree. There's only so much strength a human mind can have."

"Maybe you're just out of practice."

He shrugged.

"You can change... who you are, what you look like... so that you live for hundreds of years... centuries..."

The Doctor was silent at first, then he nodded. "Regeneration. Cellular reconstruction. There's a price, though. You don't come out... the same. Something dies, something lives on." He picked up a glassy stone and studied it. "I wasn't born looking like this," he said. "I've had many faces before. Nine, actually."

"A hundred years for each, then?"

"Oh, we live longer than humans anyway. Age slower. I had only a few years for some, and centuries for others... a Time Lord my age usually wouldn't have gone through as many lives as I have, to tell you the truth."

"How long like this? The way you are now?"

"Five years. And... that should have been it. Remember when you found me? How I was covered in radiation, and all that? I was going to... die. Part of me. _This_ me should be dead. I regenerated... but I didn't. Something stopped it before I could change."

"You'd been killed?"

"I almost made it. It wasn't even murder, which was looking pretty likely. Just something I should have foreseen, and didn't. Silly, really. But I didn't want to die! Who knows who I'd become? I _like_ the way I am!"

"Nobody really wants to die. Most people would give anything to be able to live as long as you have, without fear of annihilation or... cessation of spirit."

"It's not a gift," he said slowly. "Sometimes it's more like a curse."

"Why? You have so much more time to live in."

"You wouldn't know what it's like. You wouldn't understand."

"As long as there's life, there's something to live for."

"Is that a quote?"

"No, I just made that up right now. But it sounds as if it could be true, doesn't it?"

"Maybe."

"Besides, I thought you didn't want to die."

"I don't know why I... I didn't want to lose something. Something I might never find again. I don't know what it was, but..."

Thousands of stars, twinkling in the night, and none for this wandering planet. It travels with its moons, stardust burning in the skies as it passes. Maybe it had a star, once. Perhaps it grew and grew, consuming all the inner planets of the solar system, but this one was far enough away that it escaped. Maybe the sun died one day and blew itself to dust in this nebula, and somehow the planet survived. Now it floats through the dust of its star, until a new sun forms from the ash.

Xan turned over and drew a spiral on the ground, brushed it clean, and doodled another circle. Slowly a picture began to form.

Before she finished it, she had realized what it was. And saw what it meant. "It's _your_ language, isn't it?"

The Doctor touched the symbol. "Yes. It... was."

"Was?"

In a voice that was quite toneless, as though he had said this many times before, the Doctor told her, "There aren't any Time Lords anymore. Except for me. I'm the last one."

Dull horror made its way like a rain cloud across her thoughts as Xan began to understand what he'd said. It was the way he spoke, the way he stared at empty space, something in his eyes that grabbed hold of the tendrils of her empathy and overloaded them. She said nothing.

"A war," he answered the silence. "I suppose we lost. Or they did, the enemy. It wouldn't have made a difference. Oh, and of course they were very evil, and we were very good, and we were defending the universe from a great threat... I don't know what we thought we were doing... but we did it... and that was it. They wouldn't have shown us mercy, you see. They don't believe in mercy. Or that anything deserved to live but them."

"And you survived?"

"Yes."

"You... and no one else? How?"

"I don't know."

It might have been a lie, but Xan knew it was all she would get.

"You're sure? There couldn't be others, hiding, maybe...?" It sounded so pathetic, when she said it.

"No. I'd know if there were."

"It's a big universe..."

"Yes, but... we always find each other, in the end. There aren't any more. No one else would have survived. No one can leave the planet, Xan. Nothing can ever touch it again. There's a Time Lock, so it can't be changed. And maybe to keep the Time Lords in, too. Maybe they were as much of a threat to the universe as... as..."

He suddenly stared straight ahead, agony creasing his face. The words tumbled out before he could hold them in. "They came back," he whispered. "The Time Lords came back and tried to kill us all. Tried to end Time. Twelve years ago, for you, but I... that was what I came from. Days ago. Christmas, and the end of Time. They would have destroyed _everything_. I thought we were protectors. Not... _monsters_.

"Before it had been the enemy. Because they came back, too. The... Daleks. First it was the Emperor, and then the Cult of Skarro - that was their planet, Skarro - and then even their creator... they kept coming back, and I kept fighting...

"But then... then it wasn't the enemy at all... it was my own people... doing what the Daleks kept trying to do, and I had to stop them..."

He trailed off, and there was a sad stillness.

Xan looked down at the symbol. "It almost... almost looks like a star system, doesn't it? The phoneme here could be a planet, and this is its moon, and here would be another..." She drew another word, one of the numbers she'd learned. The Doctor watched her forefinger trace patterns on the sand. She would start with the main circle, and then from the top, clockwise. It took her less than five seconds to draw a symbol, and each one was neat and legible. _That's not drawing,_ thought the Doctor suddenly. _That's writing! She's not drawing the symbols from memory. She's writing them! And,_ he added sullenly, _her handwriting's a lot better than mine..._

Xan tried to remember the letters. How did they go... how would you write, for example, the sounds in her name?

"Star," said the Doctor, staring at the word. Xan looked up in puzzlement. "_Xan_ means star..." He wrote two words out. Xan squinted at them.

"Your handwriting is terrible," she said.

He ignored this.

"That's my name," Xan said at last. "Or, something close to it. Xan Russell... _xan uhr'sel_?"

"It means... it's a phrase, means something like... someone who's been... displaced, maybe, or cut down... then you'd call them a falling star."

Xan was quiet for a while. "That's a hell of a coincidence," she muttered.

"But 'Xan' is from 'Alexandra,' right, and that's Greek..."

"Meaning, 'defender of men.' That's a good name. And 'Russell' is from 'russet,' red-haired. It's an old name. Very... European, right?"

"Right," said the Doctor in relief. "Absolutely. And Xan couldn't... stand for anything, could it?"

"Uh, no. Not unless it started with 'x-ray' or 'xenial' or 'xylophone,' or something."

"No, I don't think anyone's told me anything prophetic about xylophones lately. Just checking."

"It could stand for Xmas," pointed out Xan. "Like... Xmas At Noon! That's when something bad happens!"

"Probably you're right," admitted the Doctor, "It _always_ is. But it doesn't have anything to do with your name."

"I know. It's a nickname, anyway."

Names... what's in a name? Everything.

"You wouldn't happen to have a...?"

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind. Doesn't matter."

"Happen to have what?"

"Nothing." For some reason, he looked at his right hand, the one he'd said Xan had done something to. "D'you know, I lost this hand once. Well it wasn't _this_ hand. It was another one."

What could you possibly say in response to that? "Really?"

He studied his wrist. "See, look, you can almost see where it got cut off."

"And... then what happened?"

"I grew it back."

"Ah. That's... handy."

"No, he's not here right now."

"What are you talking about?"

He gesticulated. "Budding. Medusa. Metacrisis. Don't ask."

In the corner of the sky, Xan saw a green glow. She pointed. "Is that...?"

Very slowly, the glow turned into a veil. Red laced the edges, which rippled and shone like the fiber optic curtain in the living room window of Xan's house. Bit by bit, the heavens lit up with color. Lights towered over the plain, moving in a slow dance to cover the stars in a glittering blanket.

_There must be some reason why he's showing me _this_,_ Xan told herself. She allowed her mind to relax and answers drifted forward out of her subconscious. _It's an incredible sight, but that's not important. It's not the beauty that's important. What is it?_

_Just... how many miles up, in the ionosphere? Tons of burning radioactive gas, emitting light. Gamma rays, alpha particles, beta particles, positrons. Things you really don't want to be anywhere near. They look majestic, and so... alluring, waving in the sky. But it's really something dangerous; fatal, even. Something that gets inside your bones, creeps into your cells and changes them, giving them a deadly immortality. In the sky, from far away, it's wonderful and eerie and cosmic. But don't get too close. It'll consume you, like a fire, but ever so slowly..._

The sky still had patches of green glow after nearly an hour had passed. The eternal night offered no fair judge of time's passage. But now, that didn't mean anything, did it? Whatever time Xan returned to Earth, it was no longer _her_ time. She was no longer connected to it, now drifting alone without a tether. It didn't matter how late it was anymore. How could you measure your life without the constant movement of the sun?

"Are you _really_ nine hundred and five?" said Xan.

"Yup."

"How can you tell?" she asked craftily.

"Well... I just... I think that's right!"

"But you don't know how long a year lasts, traveling around in time. Do you have a birthday?"

"Um. I guess not."

"You don't even know how old you are."

"Yes, I do!"

"How do you know when it's been a year? And why use human years, anyway?"

"Well, I'm _around_ nine hundred."

"Wouldn't you kind of lose track after a while?"

He sat up, struck by an unpleasant thought. "You don't think I could have turned one thousand and not noticed it? I thought I had, once, but then I thought, _Nah, I'm not that old yet_. Do you think that could have happened?"

"Well. Maybe." The way it was being asked sounded rhetorical.

"But that would be awful! I mean, how can you miss your thousandth birthday?"

"In Earth years?"

"Well, most of the people I know are human. Humans make a big deal about that sort of thing. I was thinking that when I turn one thousand, I could go find people I know, and maybe get presents or something, or free hugs. What if I missed it? It would have been so fun!"

"You can always just decide on an arbitrary date."

"I guess I could, but that's not really that..."

"Sportsmanlike?"

"No. But I've been telling everyone I'm nine hundred, so if they see me like this, they'll _know_ I'm making it all up..."

_One of his companions... was _that_ what he wanted me to forget? How many people does he meet, in passing? How many people like me? Will he someday show up on my doorstep, looking like someone else, saying he's a thousand years old, yes, I checked it, can I have a free hug? Hm. Probably not._

_The universe really _does_ seem to revolve around him, doesn't it?_

And time passed, stubbornly existing despite all metaphorical evidence to the contrary. The moons of this planet, this Eye of Orion, rose and fell, and one began to set. Xan had no idea how long a full rotation of this planet took, but it was shorter than on Earth. The night was as black as always.

The human mind can and will adjust itself to anything. Xan lay on her back, stargazing, wondering when this useful function would kick in. It didn't seem to be working properly. Every time she started to drift off, her eyes flew open and she stared around her, thinking, _Another planet! I'm on another planet!_ The little jolts would wane over time, turning into simple pleasure at the idea, and then at the view, and then towards the warm air, and the low gravity, and the restful tempo of her heartbeat, and she didn't realize she was now alone. The world shifted slowly, the sands rose up into forests, the stars turned into fireflies, and the rock to blue moss. The symbols on the ground floated into the sky and turned into stars and planets, and an identity knitted itself together, binding to the memories that were fresh and new. And then the world was dropping away from her, and she fell through the sky and her skin burned away, and she landed in a metal shell which closed shut over her, while her skin stuffed itself with cotton and cogs and walked about like a living thing.


	21. Chapter 21

**AN: There will be another dream sequence. And it's a lot weirder than the last. Remember, dreams are weird. They make only a kind of half-sense. Oh, and I wrote this scene before I saw Inception. So the 'projection' idea is my own.**

**And you can't dream about something you haven't seen before... Chew on that.**

The Doctor walked out from the TARDIS and soon found the outcrop of rock and the figure lying on the sand below it. He touched her arm, but if she felt it, it simply mingled with a dream as part of the story. The Doctor considered shaking her awake, but didn't want to disturb whatever peace she seemed to have found. It must have been quite a long time since she last slept.

So he put an arm under her neck and lifted her up so he could take her jacket, which he slung over one shoulder. Then he carried her back to the TARDIS and set her down on one of the guest cots in a small bedroom close to the console room. She shifted but didn't wake up, deep in REM sleep.

Asleep, with her crystalline, cavernous eyes veiled by her lids, Xan's aura was humbled and soft. The Doctor realized that he'd never had the chance to look at her before, not too closely. Her fierce, bitter expression always got in the way of noticing little things, like how her delicate seashell ears fit along the perfect curve of her jaw, or that her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. That her upper lip formed a crown that she always pinched away when she was awake; that her low eyebrows were a result of constant concentration; that there was always tension in her muscles that made her look sullen or strained, and that was now gone. That she was pretty, but didn't _want_ to be. Xan glared at the world as if it was always judging her, and with her body reacted to everything, as though under constant assault. Separated from her body, Xan was flawless, innocent, and even a little empty. She still tried to hide, tried to push people away, but while Xan's conscious self dared anyone to think themselves worthy of her, this Xan sadly shook her head and walked away, asking you not to follow, please, because she was headed to a place where only she could ever be.

The Doctor walked back into the console room and stood in the open front door, watching the night and the moons and the tranquil world. In twelve days, he knew, this planet would be hit by a colossal asteroid passing through, and the Eye of Orion would be shattered to dust. But for now, and forever, this moment would endure. He gently closed the door.

Then he lay back on the couch, contemplating on whether he should try sleeping or not. There was plenty to do, of course. Run a diagnostic on the systems, to see how they were. If there was anything needed fixing.

He did that. Everything was working fine (except for the chameleon circuit).

Well, there were a few mysteries to solve, now. Like... that weird temporal distortion that sent Xan back hundreds of years in his past. That needed explaining!

Except this _was_ a time machine. Obviously there would be some... slippage? That had even happened before, right?

He read a book. It wasn't very good.

He _could_ try sleeping.

No. He couldn't.

He paused as he lay down on the couch, and then sat up again. The Doctor sighed and reluctantly took out a device that looked a bit like a calculator or a PDA with a needle for a stylus. He rolled up one sleeve. Because he had to know, didn't he? Even if he didn't want to. It would be too late soon; he couldn't put it off any longer.

His blood cells were still very active. As were his skin cells and platelets, because as soon as he extracted the needle the puncture mark on his arm vanished. Probably a whole hand was out of the question by now, but a cut or a bruise would definitely have a hard time lasting for any great amount of time on his body. It would fade soon. It was like in those old human arcade games, like Space Invaders or something, or Pac-Man, when you reappeared after losing a life and you blinked for a little while, invulnerable.

The Doctor held the analyzer up and examined the magnified image of his cells. It all acted as though a regeneration had taken place, but there was just one thing missing: the energy. It was as though he _had_ dumped it all into another hand, but couldn't he tell if something like that happened? Something had sapped all of the energy out of the regeneration before it could affect any large change to the body.

What could do that? What could hold that much energy? Even that last time, it had gotten out, hadn't it? It had created a whole new person! It couldn't be contained.

But then... if it could...

What could hold that much energy?

_What could hold that much..._

... energy...

The Doctor dove out of sight.

* * *

><p>This was a room. It was supposed to call to mind a classroom. There were desks, beige ones, with little grooves for pencils. There was a whiteboard in the front, clean and unblemished by writing. A colorful carpet sat in a corner, surrounded by waist-high bookshelves.<p>

The writing on posters hung from the walls was strange and foreign. Was it even writing? It looked more like diagrams, beautifully simple, perfect shapes arranged in exciting ways. Like star charts, or displays on alien spaceships.

The window was open, and now imagine a cool breeze floating through. Tantalizingly, the outdoors waited. Xan decided to leave the room.

A hallway. It looked claustrophobic, but maybe that was because everything had four dimensions, instead of three, so the world seemed flat. Funny.

Which meant that she could see the figure enter the hallway from another doorway before it actually did.

"Hello." It seemed appropriate. "Who are you? Do you know where...?"

The figure turned. Xan's throat constricted. Fear bubbled up inside her.

"_Hello, you._"

She ran.

An open door to her left. She dashed inside and shut it. To block the door, she pulled a tall bedroom dresser in front, with little effort. It looked fancy. _Have I seen this before?_ She stared around the room, looking for a weapon. There was a sword. Probably someone from the track team left it there. Or something. She snatched it up, backing away from the door and holding the sword out in front of her. Then she turned and looked about. There was another door.

_Lotsa doors. Why? I don't know. Okay. Should be careful. One does not simply walk into more doors..._

_... that was actually humorous. Pithy. I should remember that when I wake up._

She poked it with the sword. Strangely, the material of the door just... vanished. Inside it was... outside. Right on. Outside's good.

Sunlight. A forest with muted, grayed colors. A road. Cold blue sky. Nothing really towered, though. Not in four dimensions. Even outside felt somewhat cramped. Xan followed the cracked concrete, and then space seemed to pinch together, and she was at the end of the road.

She had been walking for a long time, right? Of course. That was a long way. Long way, long time. Right. Soon, she'd find something interesting. Something to do. Maybe an adventure. Maybe it had followed her, and she'd have to fight it.

There was no one around. Not even a snake whispering across dead leaves. Not even a bird calling in the vertically flattened trees.

There had to be something. There was always _something_.

"Hey! Come on! Where's my something?" It was childish, but Xan was perplexed. Wasn't this supposed to be a... _Maybe a dragon will fly out of the clouds and I'll get on its back and..._ She visualized hopefully. The sky was blue and flat and dragonless. _But that always works!_ She felt the ground. It felt back.

_Very realistic, but boring. I thought this would be a fun one. Is this Earth?_

"Well, it _could_ be. But not for long." A voice! A thing! A person! And she hadn't even expected it! Something surprising! Someone... oh jeez.

"Well, hello."

"Miss me?"

"_Minime. Cur mihi in somnie venisti_?"

"Why did I come to you in a dream... Then you know you're dreaming? Well done. That's quite a talent you have. Not everyone can control their unconscious mind... Why are you speaking in Latin? Not that it matters. Because ae, I know Latin and bee, I can listen to any language in _my _language. Clever, eh?"

"Not really. And I can speak in any language I want here. Even if it is somewhat of a non sequitur. But that's normal, for this place. I happen to like Latin."

"Well, I happen to like Xkxn'x. Lovely people, you know. Speech organs a bit unorthodox. Sound like they're walking on bubble wrap. Would you prefer I speak in Xkxn'x?"

"You can't speak in a language in my dream that I don't know," she said incredulously.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know it! And how the heck do you make that noise?"

"But I do. What noise?"

She attempted to imitate it.

"Ghicks-unks-kh."

"Cough drop?"

"Not funny. Very juvenile. You know what I meant."

"What, you mean Xkxn'x?"

"Of course."

"Mm."

Xan sat down on a convenient rock by the side of the road.

"So what happens now?"

A figure appeared in the far off distance, walking towards them. The man squinted, trying to make out the features of the newcomer. Xan stood, and began to walk towards the other. The first man threw out an arm.

"_Stop. Don't go any closer._"

"What?"

The first man was pulling her away, dragging her towards the forest. "You don't want anything to do with him. Come on!" He tugged her arm, and she reluctantly followed. To her surprise, he was directing her through the uncannily colorless trees at a dead run. The old, familiar feeling in her throat began to develop, the one she recognized from years of dreams. Speed. Fear. Flight.

"Who was that?" she hissed. The man ignored her. He had stopped, and she almost ran into him.

"We can't stay here, we can't stay..." He looked around frantically. "Unless..."

"Well, hello, old friend. Isn't this nice?" The first man whirled around. An unkempt-looking man with short, light hair was standing behind them, staring at them hungrily. His eyes seemed to be filmed over with madness. Xan realized she half-recognized him.

"I've seen you before... "

"Funny, that we've turned up here, of all places."

"I just can't... remember where..."

"And you've brought her, too. Perfect." He absently tapped his leg.

"Leave her alone." The first man watched the hand tapping.

"Oooh. Protective, aren't we? You hardly _know_ her. She barely knows _you_."

"You don't know anything, do you?"

"I'll just leave you two to this, then, shall I?"

"Are you... oh, no, you _couldn't_ be..." Mock horror. "..._interfering_?"

"So then, goodbye, strange people, I've got better things to do."

"I thought you wouldn't tolerate that sort of thing."

"This isn't the same."

"I'm out of here," Xan muttered. "Go find your own dream." She began to walk back through the forest. The second man suddenly flung himself in her path, his face contorted as if hearing some painful sound.

"_No. You're not going anywhere!_"

Xan reached behind her in one quick movement and pulled out the sword from a sheath that had appeared on her back. It whistled through the air satisfyingly.

"_Like hell I'm not_." She pointed the sword at the man, who didn't react. Some instinct told her to kill this man now, because otherwise she'd be running away from him for the rest of her life. She fought it back. No need for unnecessary gore... yet. As if hearing her thoughts, the second man laughed unpleasantly.

"No. Put that down." The first man.

"I will not."

"It's pointless, he can't die here."

"I can _think_ him dead. That works too."

"I know why he's here."

"I saw him before, he's... he isn't _alive_."

"Oh, now you hurt my feelings."

"Never said he was nice."

"I'm not."

Xan put the sword away. "Tell me why you're here."

"A choice."

Xan looked between them.

"Is this what it is?"

"Probably not," said the second.

"Is it supposed to be difficult?"

"Wasn't hard for me. Just one look." The second, offhand. Pain in the first's eyes.

"_The _Choice? How cliché. I've lost my style here, for sure."

"Oh, I'm not sure about that. This is a bit different." The first.

"How is it not? This is it. The dichotomy. On one shoulder, the devil." She pointed accusingly, her voice lofty with exasperation. The second man seemed proud of his label, preening with nonchalant arrogance. "On the other, the -"

"_Don't._"

"What?"

"I... Nothing."

"All evidence points to my conclusion. Isn't this the choice between good and evil? Because, you know, if it is, then fine. I choose go-"

"It isn't, so be careful."

"Ah, let her. Don't be such a spoilsport."

"I _did_ say _if_. A conditional. Handy little piece of grammar."

"This is not the choice you know from your mythology." The first.

"It isn't _my_ mythology. I personally think _that_ mythology is erroneous."

"Not the choice you expect." The second.

"Not the choice you _desire_." The first.

"No easy way out." The second. Xan, rather than becoming dizzy looking back and forth, stared between them. She could see both fine, anyway, in four dimensions.

"Do you think you have the power to choose who is right?" The first.

"Yet," whispered the second.

"You have the ability. But the power? The right?"

"And you do?" Xan asked simply.

Silence, except for the low chuckle of the second man. "This isn't about who's right," he said, predatory eyes alight.

"Or wrong," said the first.

"Not about who's _good_."

"Or who's evil," the first man told her serenely.

"No. Otherwise, you'd be right, and it'd be an easy choice for someone like you." The second, with a hint of disgust.

"It isn't about who you'd _like_ to choose. It isn't which you'd _prefer._ I'm sorry," added the first man, compassion filling his eyes. Xan tried not to look at him as she began to realize what he meant. She felt very small. The second snorted.

"_That_ would be too easy. We aren't _allowed_ to make choices like that, _right_?" This was directed at the first man, whose face went rigid.

"No." His attitude was becoming frostier under the second man's evil stare.

"No, y'see, it all goes like this. You choose which is _real_." The second man, congenially. He patted her arm. Xan moved away with a disgusted look.

"Which of us is real?"

Xan looked between them. "Neither," she said flatly. "I'm _dreaming_."

"Wrong." Gently.

"Wrong." Smugly. "And the one that's real is the one that isn't," crowed the second man. "Tricky, eh?"

"Shut. Up. I don't want you. I don't even know what's going on. And you expect me to. Somehow, that makes it really embarrassing."

"Xan." The first man.

"Please. Go away. Both of you. I'm tired. Let me sleep. Let me dream."

"Xan, the one that's real is the one that isn't. Do you know what that means?"

"The one that's real... is the one that isn't... the one that isn't real... so he's... imaginary?"

"You're _good_." The first, appreciatively.

"Don't patronize me. The one that's imaginary... square root of negative one?"

"Idiot woman. Who's the one doing the imagining here?" The second, maddeningly superior.

"You're the idiot. You're the lunatic. You're _evil. _So_ shut your face._"

"Still not getting it..."

"I can wake up any time I like and you'll disappear like a bug in a fire. Have some respect. Besides, you think you're winning some intellectual competition with me, but you aren't even a distinct... oh!" she said softly.

Both men stared at her, and blinked slowly.

"If one of you is imaginary, and one of you is real," she began. The first nodded encouragingly. Xan jerked her head in annoyance. "Then one is real and one is _made-up_. One of you is a figment of my imagination. So... one of you is just..."

"Part of yourself." The first.

"One's real, the other..."

"The other's you."

"How?"

"Look around. What do you see?"

"Nothing. My eyes are closed. I'm _asleep_. We went over this before."

"What do you perceive?"

"Sky, trees, rocks, road, wood, air. Are all these just projections of myself?"

"Very clever."

"So choose."

"Or, rather, guess."

"Guess which is real?"

"Guess which is you."

"Because one of us is real." Xan couldn't tell which one was speaking anymore.

"And the other is you."

"That is your choice."

"It is?"

"Not yet."

"But it will be."

The sky started to darken.

"But if you're _me_, does that make me evil?"

"Guess."

"And if _you're_ me, then does that mean that _you're_ the real one? No!"

"Guess."

Xan looked at the sky. It had begun to turn a fiery orange hue, burning like a sun. She felt heat on the back of her neck. A terrible dread rose up inside her.

"Guess."

"Choose."

"Pick your path."

"Write your story."

Xan turned around completely, watching in shock as the ground began to char.

"Is this _really_ the time?"

"It is exactly the time. Your time."

There was something huge and horrible in the sky. Something akin to a shoe, rising above to stamp out all below it. It loomed over everything, far to big to be a dream. Xan felt her chest tighten, her throat squeeze shut. The colossal orb grew closer.

"_NO!_" she screamed, eyes suddenly seeing the two men with light and color and depth for the first time. The dream haze fell away for a terrifyingly piercing moment. "_No! No, it isn't! It never was! This is WRONG!_" She spoke the word with emphatic terror. She hadn't meant "evil." Or "amoral." She said it to mean "incorrect." Somehow, it was worse with that meaning than with any other.

"I'd die for you," said the first. "I'm willing. He's not."

"And I deserve it," added the second. " And you know he doesn't. Choose."

"I don't know what you mean! Let me go! Let me wake up! Please!" The horrible, horrible thing in the sky grew larger and larger, pressing on Xan's chest with the weight of a world. Larger... and larger still... _closer_..."_Please!_"

"You don't yet. But you will. And we can't tell you then. Only now."

"But _why_ now? _Why now!_"

"If you do not know what is to come, then could not be speaking to us. You would not be able to hear our words."

"_JUST TELL ME! NOW!_"

"Now means nothing. Soon means nothing. Then means nothing."

"_I'm not one of you!_"

The fires raged. Earth smoked. Trees fell. The hanging sphere grew larger, burning. The two men looked at each other, and nodded.

"So you know," said the first. If Xan had begun to fear him before, that was nothing compared to now. He burned brighter than the planet blocking out the heavens.

"I... No... I'm just dreaming! I don't know what I'm saying! Wake up! Wake up! I don't even know who you are! I've never even seen _you_ before!"

"Doesn't matter. We're just metaphors, you know."

"You're less than that! You're random neuronal firings! You're _arbitrary!_"

As if on cue, the second man turned and walked slowly away, disappearing into the haze. "We'll see about that," he said. The first man began to follow.

"Doctor?" Xan said quietly. He stopped and turned around. "It _is _you, isn't it?"

"Well, yes. But I'm only a dream. Like you said. Arbitrary."

"I _still_ don't understand... I mean, I do, but I don't think you're right. You _are_ a dream. Both of you are. Both! There's no _choice!_ You're... shadows! Stories! You're fabrications! You're not real, he's not real! I don't have to choose either..."

"But you? Are _you_ real?"

"Of course I am!"

He stared at her for a long time, and finally asked, "Are you sure?"

And then she found that someone was shaking her awake.


	22. Chapter 22

It's certainly a unique experience to wake up in the morning after an adventure. To remember everything that has made itself a part of your world. It doesn't feel like it is fully real until you sleep on it. If you wake up in an internally spacious time machine, then you have the pleasure of wandering out and maybe finding the bathrooms and experimenting with them. You also have plenty of time to sleep. You walk into to console room, and the Doctor is there, maybe lounging on the couch or working the controls.

Inevitably, this would be denied to her. "Get up!" someone was hissing. "Get up! Xan! This is important! Wake up!"

"You're only a dream," she mumbled. "You just said so yourself."

"What? No! I'm not! I didn't! Were you _dreaming_ about me? Wake up!"

"Go _'way_."

"_Wake up!_"

At first she wanted to swat the intrusion away, turn over, and go back to sleep. But somewhere in her mind, memories were returning, telling her that the definition of 'important' had been drastically altered.

"Okay, all right! I'm up!" She rolled off the bed, crashed to the floor, and dragged herself up again. She really _hadn't_ had much sleep recently, but a few deep lungfuls of air revived her and she shook off the unsteadiness.

"Xan!" He grabbed her shoulders, eyes wild. He was wearing his glasses, so she figured he had been working on something.

"Yes! It's me! I'm me! Yes, I am! Calm _down! _What's wrong? What's..."

"Xan, tell me about Waterhelm again!"

"Well... I... it's _evil_-"

"No, no, no, I mean when it _started_. When it was _created_. What year? Tell me!"

"I... I told you, didn't I? It was... twenty... I mean.. two thousand and ten," she stammered. "Or nine. Early 2010, late 2009."

"Two thousand nine. 2009! _Two thousand nine!_ And it was right around Christmas? You said it was..."

"It was a few days after Christmas, actually. Thus 2010. Not officially. But that was when the first patent was made for the..."

"The Christmas of '09," the Doctor said hoarsely, like a man seeing a ghost. "Christmas of oh-nine... _Christmas_ of _2009_..." He was moving in quick, sudden jerks, and he was suddenly holding Xan by her forearms again, eyes aglow. "Christmas of 2009 - _That's when I regenerated! _That's where I just came from! The end of time! And then suddenly, a few days later, these people are filing for a patent on a _new_ _energy_ _source_... something incredibly powerful..." He pulled Xan forward, dragging her into the console room. "Look! _This_-" He held up a vial. "It's the biofuel. You see these strings, down there? Now look, look at this. It's my _blood_, and it's still got a bit of regenerative energy left... remember regeneration? Remember what you told me when we first met?" He crackled with energy, moving and speaking so fast Xan felt he might catch fire from the fraction. "Cellular mutation that destroys epigenetic tags, turning everything back into stem cells, with a _massive_ release of energy? Remember what you said? You told me you did research on that... I don't know _how_ you _knew_ but _that's it!_ That's basically what regeneration _is_ and all that energy has to go somewhere... this gigantic _explosion_ of energy emitted by the body, and I was thinking, how could anything contain that amount of energy in order to stop a regeneration in progress, because that's _incredibly_ difficult... but imagine all this... this _massive_ amount of energy, that's nearly impossible to store... to contain..." He flapped his hands at her, trying to elicit some kind of realization. "_Come on_... where have you heard that before?"

"Except... The fuel! The _fuel_ is the energy?"

"Yes! _Yes!_ I _finally_ ran a diagnostic on the fuel, and look! Look at this! You said the fuel produces tau waves... but it really _isn't_ tau waves at all, it's _huon energy_, what gets released in regeneration and lives in the heart of the TARDIS-"

"_Lives?_ The TARDIS is _alive_?"

"Well, of course it's alive, and sentient, but that's not important right now-"

"I knew it," Xan said dismissively. "I thought that from the beginning."

"-this genetic material, it's _Time Lord _DNA!"

"_WHAT?_"

"Yes, but here's the thing: _it isn't my DNA_. I don't know whose it is but it isn't mine! They're... what are they _doing?_"

"But you said you were the only..."

"I know! I know! But not that Christmas... Remember? _They came back_, so... maybe..."

"Well, what are we going to do about it?"

He was already working the controls of the console. Xan was shaken off her feet by a jolt that ran through the walls and floor as the TARDIS bent time and space around itself to travel. She fell back on the little couch, and then pulled herself up, determined to remain standing. "So where are we going?"

"Back to the subway tunnels! Sorry, Xan, but we can't..."

"Wait! Wait! Do you think they might have... I don't know, but if I were them, I'd have set up a really nasty trap for us after we got in. We might be walking right into that! Or flying! Teleporting! Whatever!"

The Doctor kicked a switch and the shaking lessened. "You have a better idea?"

"I don't know... we should... wait a second... _where_ are we now, exactly?"

"What?"

"Are we in some sort of space-time limbo right now? Because we aren't on the Eye of Orion anymore, but we haven't reached Earth..."

"I guess so... is that really import-"

"Never mind. Just curious. Wait... I think... where exactly _is_ that underground facility? Because that man you froze... one of them... I'd seen him in the laboratory just before I left the building... and then there he was, in the hallways... He couldn't have got to the facility the way I did, because you can't have a public subway stopping in the middle of nowhere regularly, so there has to be an entrance somewhere... from the laboratory?"

It made sense to the Doctor. "Yeah. That makes sense. It's always like that, right?"

"In movies and things, exactly. Except... wait... it _couldn't_ have been close to the university, because I was traveling away from it on the subway... it just makes sense for it to be under the university, because Waterhelm designed the place, and they could add a whole facility below it easily..."

"How long were you traveling on the subway?"

"Maybe ten, fifteen minutes. That's enough time to go pretty far."

"But how long were you _walking_ in the tunnels?"

"I don't know... I lost track. It was a long time, though. Forty minutes?"

From somewhere, a piece of paper emerged. The Doctor grabbed a pen out of thin air and drew a square. "This is the university," he said. "How far from there to the subway station?"

"Maybe... I'm not so good with distances... ugh... okay, maybe a tenth of a mile. Wait, do you need that in kilometers? 'Cause I can't do them..."

"I'm an alien genius with a British accent, Xan. I don't need metric." He drew a stubby line extending from the square. "So which way do the subways run? Parallel to this distance, or perpendicular?"

"Perpendicular. And-"

"And fifteen minutes on a train, with stops, maybe... given that they run on biofuel... like _that_." He drew a long slash. Then he scratched out a bit at the top. "Like _that_. And you get off into the tunnels..."

"I _think_ it would be in this direction..."

"So assume an average walking speed of..." he muttered to himself, and then drew a new, longer slash. Then he concentrated and drew another point on the paper, and a path from it. "And this would be where I started, given a scale of... layout of the streets..." He muttered to himself for a few more seconds.

Then he drew a large square on the paper. "The facility," he said.

"A rough estimate."

"Probably a degree of uncertainty of... about twenty meters, so, yeah..."

"Only _twenty_ meters?"

"You may not keep track of your walking pace, but I've found it very useful to..."

Xan pointed at the large square. "So it _could_ be underneath the university!"

The Doctor dashed back to the controls, plotting a new destination. "And that's where we're going!" Xan watched this out of the corner of her eye, trying to compare it to what she'd seen before. _If you think of the console as six separate panels,_ she thought, _you could maybe figure out how to operate each of them one at a time... then layer it, like the left and right hands in piano..._

There was also a feeling in the air, that guided you. Xan tried to put it into words. Maybe it was like a compass. She was one of those people who could always tell you where north was. No matter the terrain, north always felt a little like 'up' and south a bit like 'down'. Now, north and south didn't mean anything at all, but there was still a feeling of 'up' and 'down' that persisted to her, in the middle of a wormhole between two distant star systems. 'Up,' paradoxically, seemed to pull her forwards, and 'down' pushed her away. There was a great sense of falling at present.

"Are we traveling _backwards_ in time?" she asked, because her gut was telling her that this was the case, insisting, even.

The Doctor slowly turned to look at her, one hand on a lever. "That's right," he managed. "How did you know?"

"A feeling," Xan tried to explain. "It's harder to go backwards in time than forwards, because of the way... does it have to do with the expansion of the universe? The way matter moves... I don't know... Lucky guess?"

"Probably. You had a fifty-fifty chance." But he kept staring at her, which was disconcerting to say the least.

* * *

><p>London<p>

Friday, December 24th, 2021

In a little alleyway beside the campus of Avalon University, a neat square patch of ground grew cold, then warm. First, all that could be seen was a light, blinking about seven feet off the ground, and all that could be heard was a shrill, rough siren. Then the outline of the phone box appeared, pulsing with the siren, growing in intensity and tangibility until it was standing in the alleyway as innocuously as if it had always been there. The door opened inwards, and two figures emerged, although there should have been barely enough room for the two of them inside the blue police box.

The alley hadn't been empty, not even before the phone box (which, of course, had always been there) had appeared. There had been a man, sitting, waiting. Images and memories crashed together like waves in his mind. He saw the blue box appear. He almost thought that he knew what it meant. Things were returning to him.

His name was not Robbie Hoss, for one thing. It was almost certainly Roberto Hussein, which sounded much more respectable, and refined.

_Roberto Hussein._ The words just sounded right, now. Where had they been, all this time?

The man and the woman had almost reached the end of the alleyway. Both were walking quickly, urgently.

Roberto Hussein, once known as Robbie Hoss, got to his feet. He usually slouched through the streets, leaning on a wire basket full of trash to recycle, or weighed down by layers of thin clothing to keep the cold out. His bones always ached.

_Vitamin D deficiency,_ said a voice. _And low calcium. Characteristic of malnutrition. You should eat better._

Was it his own head? The words...

_Doctor..._ susurrated the voice in his head.

"Doctor!" he called. The man whirled around.

_Tell him... help me..._

"I... I know who you are," said Roberto Hussein.

It was hard to hear the response.

"Well, I don't think it's mutual."

"Wait a second, Doctor! Wait. I've seen him before..."

"Where?"

"This homeless guy... er... no offense... when we came up from the subway? I saw him. He looked like he recognized you."

Two voices, now. The woman's.

"No, no, that doesn't make sense. I _have _seen him before. But that was when I was going _into_ the subways..."

_Tell him! _

"Broken..." whispered the disoriented man. "Burning..."

"How do you know who I am?"

"Lost... alone... cut down..."

"He's not making any sense!"

"But how did he know who I..."

"This is creepy! Whoever he is..."

"Star!" gasped Hussein. "Falling star!" He raised a hand and pointed at the girl.

_No! No! You'll scare her! Don't...!_

Her eyes grew stony. "Who are you?"

_She doesn't know! Don't be a fool! Tell the Doctor!_

But whatever inner voice was speaking to the man had lost its hold on him. He sank back to the ground, and shied away when the Doctor took a step forward. A white porcelain mug dislodged itself from a bundle of rags and rolled away from him. As the Doctor reached down to pick it up, the homeless man fled.

As she leaned up against the Doctor, trying to see what was on the cup, Xan realized she had half expected the green 'W' symbol that adorned it.

"Waterhelm Industries," she read aloud. "It's an office mug. Like the pens you get from banks, or the thermoses from drug companies."

The Doctor turned the cup over in his hands. His thumb brushed along the base, and felt something rough. He was flipped the mug over, trying to read the words engraved on the bottom. Then he showed it to Xan. The letters had begun to run smooth, but they were still recognizable: R. Hussein.

"R. Hussein...?" She rubbed her fingers up the bridge of her nose, as it she was pushing up a pair of spectacles. "I know that name, and I can tell you why, too! He's the man who..."

"Owned the fuel cell you..." began the Doctor triumphantly.

"Owned the fuel cell I showed you, the one I use..."

"That man was a scientist at Avalon?"

"Either he got the mug from R. Hussein or he _is_ R. Hussein. But if he is, why is he... I mean, he's homeless! And babbling nonsense... If he worked at Avalon, he was smart, successful... even if he lost all his money, he could have found a job, he'd have to have had a college degree..."

"Maybe money wasn't the only thing that he lost... or that was taken from him..." There was a brief pause. Then the Doctor placed the mug on the ground and locked the TARDIS door. He briefly jangled the key in Xan's direction - _see? I didn't forget this time!_ - and tucked it away. As they entered the campus of the university, the Doctor looked at Xan critically.

"You should prob'ly change soon," he said. "You _slept_ in those clothes."

He was rewarded with a narrow-eyed stare. "You haven't changed, either. _You're_ still wearing the same clothes as yesterday. And I don't really care about my _clothes_," Xan said carefully. "But I _would _have changed, if I'd had time to sleep and been woken up at a _morningish_ sort of hour."

"Morning. _Ish_?"

"Need I remind _you_ about the fluidity of time? I meant, morning in accordance with my circadian rhythm."

"Well, it's morning now."

"Yeah, 'cause you _decided_ it was."

"Wasn't it?"

"Humans usually sleep for about eight hours. So, no, it wasn't."

"_Eight_ hours? But what do you _do?_ Doesn't it get _boring_ after an hour or so?"

She gave him a sidelong look. "Part of being asleep is being unconscious, though. And there's always dreaming."

"Well, I _knew_ that, but... I can always _tell_ how long I've been asleep."

"But you said you _didn't_ sleep."

"I said I didn't _need_ to sleep. For me it's sort of... recreational."

The facade of the main building was street-side, and thus, to appeal to passers-by, very polished and pristine. The deceptively bare cherry blossom trees were dotted along a garden row. An attempt to give it an established feel had yielded the columns, which were standard Greco-Roman, like the raised gold lettering that announced the official name: UNIVERSITY OF AVALONIA.


	23. Chapter 23

**AN: I know this starts the same way as the last chapter ended. That's intentional.**

The facade of the main building was street-side, and thus, to appeal to passers-by, very polished and pristine. The deceptively bare cherry blossom trees were dotted along a garden row. An attempt to give it an established feel had yielded the columns, which were standard Greco-Roman, like the raised gold lettering that announced the official name: UNIVERSITY OF AVALONIA.

And below it, garishly colored, was the Waterhelm logo. _Our generous corporate sponsor_.

Immediately Xan realized that something was amiss. For one thing, the building wasn't closed. People in groups of two or three were making their way up the steps. But it was Christmas Eve! Why was there actually a small _line_ at the check-in desk? Xan and the Doctor exchanged a startled look and instantly Xan pushed her way into the building and rushed up to a familiar face.

"Colin? It's Colin, right? What's everyone doing here? It's Christmas Eve!" Then she paused, and added, under her breath, "It had better be. Why are you all here?"

The small man took a few steps back. He found his voice. "I... er... hello, Xan..."

"_Tell me!_"

Alarmed, Colin stammered, "Didn't you get the email?"

"What email?"

"From Waterhelm? Everyone on the payroll needs to be here by ten o'clock. But... if you don't know, why are _you_ here?"

"Waterhelm sent you an email?"

"Yes, they... why didn't you get it?"

"I... staying over... at a friend's house..."

From what she could see, Colin didn't believe her. Well, it wouldn't have been very believable to any of these people, who thought of her as some kind of hermit. Then he saw the Doctor rushing up to Xan, apprehension clouding his features. Colin puffed himself up a little. "What, with _him?_" he asked, mortified.

It is lost to the world what Xan would have said to this, but before she could say it, the Doctor grabbed her arm and pulled her round to face him. "They've all been sent for by Waterhelm!" he hissed. "Everyone! What are they trying to do?"

Hardly five seconds of thought pulled up an unpleasant array of answers. They broke apart, and Xan wheeled back around and darted over to Colin Montague, rubber sneaker soles sliding on the smooth floor.

"Go home," she ordered, grabbing his arm. She pushed him towards the door. "Now! Now! Go home! Don't come into this building! Just go! Get out, before something happens!"

"What... what are you expecting to happen? I can't leave, I won't get my check unless..."

The Doctor was shepherding the scientists towards the great glass doors. _And students,_ realized Xan. _Oh, god, and students, too. Everyone._ He met Xan's gaze from across the room and set his jaw.

"_Everyone listen to me right now!_" he yelled.

Something in his voice froze the room. Not a person took a step, or uttered a sound. Silence struck the rotunda with the speed of a thunderbolt.

Every pair of eyes watched the man as he leapt up a few steps of the great central staircase so he could address them all, never taking his eyes off the people who were staring at him.

Xan could see that this was only a shadow of what he was capable of, and yet he had such an aura of power and authority that even she felt, for a moment, a sharp, acidic shiver darting up between her ribs. She furiously told herself, _I'm immune to psychic deception! I froze his damn hand when he tried to mess around in my head!_ But she knew, in that little tiny place in your chest that people mistake for the heart so often, that this wasn't the same. _I punched him in the stomach once,_ she reminded herself fiercely. _And he was _ticklish_!_ Some of the control over her dissipated. _And he likes bananas and has a time machine that feeds him green slop._ Finally the feeling faded. She watched him now from the outside looking in.

"_Listen to me, and do what I tell you,_" the Doctor ordered in a quiet voice that everyone heard, clear as a chord. "This is not a meeting about your salary. This is not about your job._ If you stay here, you will be in danger. Go home! Right now! And don't let anybody else in!_ Let them leave, but _don't let another person enter this building!_"

A security guard who was made of sterner stuff reached surreptitiously for something black and shiny in his belt. "And who the bloody heck are _you?_" he demanded.

The Doctor turned to look at the guard, at the hand making its way to the holster of a gun, and his eyes _blazed_.

The guard stepped back, resolve crumbling to dust. He wobbled, stumbled, and managed to be the first person out of the door, before the rotunda emptied. Every single person turned around and trudged out into the streets, not slowly, but not quite fast enough for it to look disturbing. Even the security guards filed out. The once-crowded room was completely empty in seconds.

The man on the stairs straightened his brown greatcoat and stepped down to the floor. The muted _tap_ that the tips of his trainers made on the first stride echoed in the barren room. Xan tried not to shudder or look away when he approached her.

"Well," the Doctor said finally, with a shrug. "_That_ sorted them out."

Xan turned her head to one side, staring at the floor to the left of her, a smile creeping over her face.

"What?" he asked, almost playfully, moving so she was still looking at him. She moved her head back, and he stepped with her gaze, mischief dancing in his eyes. "What did I do?"

"What did you... _do?_" Xan focused at the ceiling. The Doctor shifted closer, so he was only inches away. Xan looked him right in the eyes. "You have _got_ to show me how to do that," she told him, steel casually lacing every syllable.

For a second, he leaned in closer still. "I _could_," he said. Xan hardly flinched. Then, moving back with a smooth suddenness, he added, with a hint of respect, "But I'm not sure you need me to."

She grabbed his arm. "Those weren't the only people," she said urgently. "If they wanted to get everyone together in one place, then everyone's probably in the reactor room. It's giant, even bigger than here, but it's basically in the basement. It gets used for special events - Come on!"

It struck the Doctor as they dashed through the hallways, with Xan (as usual) leading, that he really _could_ be in the underground facility. The color scheme was right, and the texture of the walls... These halls were more companionable, though. They had pictures on the walls, and the occasional plant, and they weren't as empty.

The reactor room was well named. In the center a giant, crackling shape loomed, so tall that it extended up several stories, all of which radiated hallways out from the smooth walkway that wrapped itself around the reactor. Xan had taken them by a cramped back staircase full of pipes, and they heard the noise of confused people talking before they saw the crowd on the floor below.

Some wore their lab coats, but others of the crowd had on casual attire. Even though there was no apparent reason to worry, the chatter had a nervous edge to it. And all the while, the reactor, like a giant warp core, glowed and thrummed. It was only for display, to give the place a high-tech feel, but it sent vibrations out across the floor, shuddering up people's feet.

Xan slipped away into the mass of people. _How many?_ she thought. _Several hundred at least. Some of these people aren't even scientists! Some of them are students! What's going on? What's going to happen?_

The Doctor realized Xan had vanished. A feeling unfounded on reason didn't want to be separated from her when whatever was about to happen went down. Unnerved, he scanned the room for the girl; then he pushed off into the crowd, battling his way though, calling her name. When he finally found her, she was by the reactor, trying to catch the attention of River Song.

"Listen to me," she pleaded. "This is important! Please! You have to tell people to leave! There may not be much time left! Listen to me, Dr. S-" She was cut off as the Doctor pulled her back.

"Don't _do_ that!" he said angrily. "Stay where I can see you!"

"But... _what the heck d'you mean_...?"

"Whatever's going to happen..."

"I was trying to _help!_"

"...you can't just run off like that!"

"Does it _really_ matter? _You're_ in as much danger as I am; in fact, from what I can tell, you-"

"Is that you, Xan?"

She turned around. "Yes, it's _me!_ I was _trying_ to get your _attention_!"

River Song stared at Xan. The girl was staring her down, looking her right in the eye, more alive than River had ever seen her. Then she noticed the Doctor. "What's he doing here? Isn't he the heath and safety inspector?"

He'd run out of patience from worry. "No," the Doctor clarified. "I _said_ I was a health and safety inspector."

"What... you _lied_?"

"I bent the truth. I said I was the _Waterhelm_ _inspector_, which is true, because I was inspecting Waterhelm on matters of heath and safety. But _anyway_..." He turned back to Xan. "Something's going to happen, and I don't want you getting hurt..."

"We're supposed to be working together on this, right? Can't you trust me to take care of myself? Besides, nothing's happened yet..."

It was impossible to miss the click of an opening door. The tapping of shiny shoes on the metal wire catwalk. Still holding Xan, as though she'd disappear if he let go, the Doctor lifted his head. Xan followed his gaze, and saw the grey suit rustle over their heads. Without letting go of her, the Doctor pulled Xan towards the corner of the room. What followed was a noiseless scuffle, and Xan twisted out of the Doctor's grip and slapped his arm away, but stayed put. The thin, grey man above them leaned on the catwalk's railing and clasped his hands together serenely, as though enjoying a breezy view by the sea. Then he straightened up.

"A Merry Christmas to you all," he said, and the mic on his lapel picked up the words and amplified them. "You've worked diligently for the past couple of years in this building, haven't you? You've all been... _giving_... so much to this company and this society... haven't you?" His slate eyes roved the room. "We _do_ believe in paying our debts... when profit allows, of course."

The Doctor huddled against the throbbing surface of the reactor. His hand touched the glass.

"I really am here to commend all of you... but a few special individuals in particular. You've given us what we needed to be here today... this is a gift best repaid in kind." He began to walk out into the center of the catwalk. Most people were watching him, wondering if it would be them who would be rewarded. "Because what you have given us," said the man, raising his voice slightly, "goes beyond simple profits. Money, it is true, can serve well the purposes of those who use it... as an intermediary... but it is not _money_ that makes the world go round... no, it is _power!_" He flung his arm out to the humming reactor. "It is... _energy_..."

"How long has the human race huddled in darkness, making fires from rock? We learned, soon, that _coal_, that _carbon_, they would make better fires, because," and here he let his voice drop to a whisper, "they were closer to _life._ But millions of years away from it. And now we have moved past that! Let the human race propel itself to the stars on _living energy!_"

_Aha_, thought Xan triumphantly. _But what about wood?_ She self-reflected. Then she realized she was lacking perspective. _Forest for the trees,_ she thought, but smugly added, _Combustible, living trees..._

"Many of you," the grey Waterhelm man went on, "must have been wondering about the fuel that powers this city and many others. I have seen it in your eyes, in your whispers..."

These people weren't ignorant or foolish. Many of them had begun to back away from the man on the catwalk, shuddering and looking at one another in alarm. But others listened, rapt.

"But in truth, you are the creators of the fuel that we use. _You_ run this city, because without you, we would never have found the gift... that keeps on giving... And now, thanks to you, we have in our reach the very source of this energy! Our fuel powers cities, but soon, it will generate the energy to sustain a pan-galactic empire, stretching not only to the furthest reaches of the universe, but back into the past and far into the future!"

Xan whipped her head around, ready to calm the Doctor at a moment's notice. She expected some kind of reaction, at least. But her eyes widened. Had he heard the man? The Doctor was leaning against the reactor, eyes shut tight, palms rigid against the glass. Inside, tendrils of golden energy were forming and moving together, drawn to his hand. She looked back to the man on the catwalk, and back at the Doctor. She reached out to shake him, but he moved like a snake and caught her wrist. His eyes were still shut.

"Excuse _me!_" said a woman's voice. The grey eyes turned and found the speaker.

"River Song," snapped the woman. "Archeologist. I have a question for you, Mister... Mister...?"

He did not offer her a name.

"I think all of us here are eager to hear more about this pan-galactic empire you speak of, but I have this one question for you _all_." She looked around. "Especially _you_."

"Well, pray, tell us," mocked the grey man. "What is this...?"

"_Who do you think you are?_"

"Well said," murmured the Doctor. His eyes snapped open, and he turned his head to look at Xan. For a brief moment, she thought she saw a golden glow in his eyes.

The grey man couldn't find a response.

"Who do you think you are that you can talk of pan-galactic empires and living energy? Who do you think you are to tell us that we're so special? And who do you think you are to use us to build an energy source that you haven't found it necessary to enlighten us about? And now you say you've found the source? Of _what_, exactly?"

"Archeology..." mused the grey man. "What an... _old_ study. I have a question for you, Ms. Song... why exactly do we need archeology in this society of... forward-thinkers? This is a facility to propel us into tomorrow, not scrutinize yesterday. We really have no use for archeology here..."

"You're dead wrong," whispered Xan. She wanted to say it louder, so he could hear. She knew that Dr. Song was right, but she also knew that the woman didn't know just _how_ right she was. And Xan could tell them all _exactly_ why. She could...

As she leaned forward, air in her lungs being processed by her voice box, she felt the faintest touch of a hand on her own, and a slight squeeze. Then it vanished. There was no sign that the Doctor had ever moved.

"I wonder, though, if there is anyone else who agrees with you..." said the grey-suited man. He was not entirely alone. Other men ringed the hallways, emerging from shadows. "Any _particular_ person who might feel the same way? Anyone you know, hm? Someone in your department, River Song, archeologist? I'm talking about someone who really deserves quite a bit of credit for this fuel... is she here? Is Xan Russell here right now? Tell me, Ms. Song..."

_He used my nickname,_ Xan realized, shocked._ Why would he call me 'Xan' instead of 'Alexandra'? How _could_ he know my nickname... ? It isn't a common one! Why did he ask for _Xan_ Russell?_

Then Xan realized that River Song knew where she was. _Please don't say anything! You know he's evil! You can tell, you aren't an idiot! Please! If he knows where I am, he'll find the Doctor! You don't want to kill the Doctor, you saved his life once! You will... one day... don't say anything! Don't give him away!_

Why was she thinking '_Don't give him away_'? Why not '_Don't give _me_ away_'?

What could she do?

She could protect him. She could hide him. Xan started to move forward, to say, "I'm right here!" and run up the catwalk to the grey man, make him take his attention off the place she had come from, and face him for once. She could take him in a fight. If a Siren Hound attacked, it would have to get through the grey man, and then her. And the Doctor would have time to escape...

Even before the Doctor dove for her, catching her around the waist and propelling her towards the back staircase, she knew that he would never take the escape she could give him. He would never run and leave her. The thought should have been comforting, but wasn't.

"What do you want with her? She was right... right over there... "

But now she wasn't.

In the stairwell, the Doctor pushed Xan against a wall. "_What did you think you were doing?_" he snarled.

Xan shoved him away. "I don't think he's looking for _me_," she shot back. "He thinks I know where _you_ are, and if River Song had pointed me out, he would have seen you! But if I showed myself first-"

"_That's_ what I _thought_," whispered the Doctor angrily. "Don't you_ dare_ try anything like that again! _Ever!_"

"Or _what?_"

He stood ramrod straight. "Or, so help me, I'll fly away and leave you behind,_ I swear I will._"

Xan looked out into the reactor room, peeking out from behind the door. "Not much fun without you," she whispered, almost to herself. She turned around. "Could _you_ promise the same thing?"

His expression told her the answer.

"What do you want with her?" demanded Song. _Oh, what a time for your ridiculous protectiveness to kick in_, Xan said inwardly._ Couldn't you have thought about this _earlier_?_

"Why, simply to thank her... for everything she has done for us..." Hardly thinking about his words, the grey man stared at the spot Song had pointed to. "Are you sure you saw her?"

Song had the sanity not to respond in the affirmative. "No, I'm not actually sure that was her."

"No?"

"To tell you the truth, I must have been mistaken..."

The man pulled out a handheld device. "He's checking the entry records," hissed Xan. "I asked a security guard about them right after I got off that city bus, two days ago... well, it wasn't _right_ after for him... I know that's what he's doing... we didn't check in, did we?"

"No," whispered the Doctor. "The security guards all left, didn't they?"

"So he won't see anything, not even a false ID entering with your psychic paper..."

"He won't know we're here..."

The grey man cocked his head to one side. "Ms. Russell spends a lot of time in hallways, doesn't she?" he asked, almost to quiet to be heard. He shrugged as if it was of no concern.

"What's he talking about?"

"Two days ago. I entered the building around twelve forty... er... forty-two, I think it was, and entered a lab at around four th... sixteen thirty, by twenty-four hour time..."

"What were you _doing?_"

"It was a time slip! I wasn't _doing_ anything."

The grey-suited man turned his head briefly to one side. His gaze was directed down a hallway. He touched his mic, and it switched off. Xan saw his lips form a question. Then he nodded. And he walked from the room. He strolled along the catwalk and into a hallway, and out of sight.

No one moved. Xan supposed, later, that it wouldn't have made a difference. But no one moved at all. They looked at one another, puzzled, unsure of what to do. Were they still supposed to be waiting?

Then sounds, ones that no one fully understood at first. Crashes. _Slam, slam, slam,_ one after another, and the lights went out.


	24. Chapter 24

**AN: This chapter is hovering on the edge of a T rating, on account of some violence and gore. It's not too bad, not enough to bump the whole story up to T in my opinion, but I felt like there should be a warning. Also, I'm still not entirely satisfied with it, so I might alter it some more.**

Only by the flickering glow of the generator could anything be seen. People were turning, uttering sharp exclamations, but not screaming. Not running. They simply didn't know what they should do.

Like embers, the red emergency lights on the railings and walls illuminated, crackling on in the hesitant, fractured manner of light sticks.

"Lockdown," Xan whispered in the silence. "Those sounded like... military things. Blast doors. What the heck? We don't have _blast doors _in a _university_."

She'd tried to say it quietly, but the words began to percolate out into the chamber. It couldn't be stopped. Someone else picked up the chorus.

"Doors... locked... oh god..."

"This can't be some kind of practical joke..."

"... it's dark... I can't see anything..."

"_Tell_ _me_ we don't have blast doors in the..."

"Who _designed_ the university, _anyway!_"

"Waterhelm," Xan spat. "Of course."

"Is that _you_, Russell?" someone asked.

"_Nice_ job, Xan," hissed the Doctor. "Slick."

"_Xan_ Russell?"

"It's _her_..."

"So she _was_ here..."

"Oh, sh-"

"_Shut it!_"

"Who was that?"

"It's me, remember?"

"No!"

"No!" This echo came from right next to her.

"If they're _looking_ for her, let's not just _shout _her name out for _everyone_ to _hear!_"

"Well, thank you... anonymous... person..."

"Warren! It's _Warren_. Don't you _bother_ learning our names?"

"Oh, _you_." That was the Doctor.

"Yes, and _who_ are _you?_" Warren, again.

"Who, _me?_"

"Yes, you. I think we'd all like to know that."

Xan's eyes were adjusting to the dark. She could tell, now, that the last speaker was River Song, who had her hands on her hips and a stubborn expression on her face.

"Oh, ha ha ha, that's very _funny_ coming from _you_."

"How so?"

"I mean, he just shows up one day with _Xan_, so obviously there's something off about that..." said Warren, and there was muttered agreement among some of the scientists.

"Hey!" yelled Xan indignantly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Wait, are you_ sure _that's her?"

"I resent that. I resent that very strongly."

"And so do I."

"Be quiet, Doctor, you aren't helping one bit."

"Oh? Oh? Didn't see _you_ saving all those people back there from whatever's about to happen!" The voice sounded farther away, now.

"_Doctor?_" said a voice. "Doctor _who?_"

"Well, _I_ don't know, but who really _cares?_"

"_I _don't know, _either_," mumbled Xan. "Wait. Where are you going?"

Warren sidled up to the corner where he heard the voice. "But you _must_ know what's going on!"

"Generally, yes. Specifically, no," said Xan without realizing where she'd heard this said before. "Doctor, where the hell are you?" She squinted through the gloom for a familiar figure.

"Generally, what, then?"

"I mean, what_ did_ it mean...? As if I act mysterious all the time? I don't _think_ so." River Song, sounding perplexed.

"I've heard of this..." whispered a voice. A woman. "I read about it..." Everyone was very eager to hear what this woman had to say, and she went on, "This book I had... trying to explain the Christmas disasters..."

"Everyone knows why..."

"Because a _comet_ hits London annually? How would that explain _this?_"

"Doctor? Where _are_ you? Just answer me! Come _on!_"

The woman's voice came hissing out of the red shadows. "A man," she said, "Or, not a man at all. Something pretending to be a man. Calling himself the Doctor."

"Oh, no!"

"Oh yes!"

"That's just conspiracy..."

"So why is this mysterious Doctor here?"

"Well, most of us _are_ doctors, you know. He may not have mentioned his name, but that doesn't make him a big scary monster..."

"An alien."

"Okay, now you're just being stupid. Call yourself a _scientist?_"

"_I _heard those urban legends too," said a new voice. "And what I heard was that the Doctor is like an angel, a protector."

"That's a weird way of putting it."

"Well, you ask my mother, _she_ says she saw him!"

"Oh, yeah, I _bet_ your mum did. Your mum is..."

"_Right here_. _That's_ where her mum is, I'll have you know. So tell me how you were planning to finish that sentence, exactly."

"Oh, be quiet, Mum."

"_Have _you ever seen the Doctor? And on that note, has anyone seen him _right now?_ Because I don't know where the _heck_ he is, that _jerk_."

"That man couldn't be _my_ Doctor," explained the voice of the unknown mum. "The man I saw didn't look anything like that fellow you were with."

"I've heard stories of many Doctors. Like it's a hereditary position or a title."

"I heard where the Doctor is a government agent."

"No, that's Torchwood."

"No, you're all wrong, you're thinking of UNIT..."

_You know what they say,_ thought Xan. _Get five scientists in a room and give them a problem, and you'll get six different answers._

"Stay where I can see you, right, sure, thanks a lot..."

"I'm right here."

"Whoa! That was creepy!"

"He's _back?_"

"Oi, Doctor, are you a government agent?"

"Nooo..."

"Are you an _alien_, then?"

"No! 'Course not. Who said that? You did? Whoever you are, you're an idiot. And you were right, Xan. There _are_ blast doors, but most of the subterranean part of the facility is inside."

"You couldn't have told me what you were doing?"

"Er. Sorry."

"So we're _trapped_?"

"Could you please let go of me?"

There was a snigger.

"Shut up, Warren. No! I don't want you to go wandering off. If you won't let _me_..."

"Doesn't want me _wandering_ off... 'Cos you don't _know_ what you're _doing_, that's why..."

"Yeah, and you do. Fine. I get that."

"And _ow_, by the way."

"What the _hell_ was that?"

Everyone froze. They had all heard it, too. They had all heard the rough, low growl that settled on the floor like a net, they had all heard the sound of feet padding quietly on the floors above.

Inevitably, someone screamed. It was a soft scream, perhaps purely out of surprise, but even before the echoes died away, the twisted black shape had leapt from the catwalk with a shriek.

You'd expect there to have been a spray of blood, but the jagged, shark-like teeth were more designed for crushing than slashing. There was a tail like a scimitar on the end of a bullwhip for that. The first person to fall was simply engulfed by oily flesh and then was no longer moving. The hound threw the carcass violently to one side, and it landed not five meters away from Xan's feet. Then the creature spun around, sniffing the air, while people fled around it. It lashed its tail it a wide arc, and _then_ blood splattered the walls in an explosion of red.

Dark shapes emerged from the hallways, three snarling beasts that flung themselves to the floor and let out hellish screams.

"Four of them," whispered the Doctor. "_Four_." He sprinted forward to the middle of the room.

"_HEY!_" he screamed. "HERE I AM, YOU _MURDERERS!_ _COME AND GET ME!_" And as one, the Siren Hounds turned.

And saw the figure standing in front of them. Suddenly, their faces twisted into grotesque masks of utter hatred, and the Doctor wheeled about and ran. All four hounds leapt for him, eyes popping, muscles taut, howling their loathing and fury.

The creatures were larger than tigers, and not nearly as graceful. The Doctor pelted up the narrow staircase, with the hounds snapping and snarling at his feet, but they were ungainly and bloated and the first one up the stairs stuck, tripped, and fell backwards, landing on its spine. The Doctor kept going, hearts racing, opening a door at random and diving through it into a dim grey hallway. The Siren Hounds, in their madness, kept on struggling onward, dashing themselves against the stairs, and soon not only human blood was coating the walls. Then, slowly, two of them slipped away.

Feet slipping on the slick floor, the Doctor raced past locked lab rooms, occasionally opening one mid-sprint with his sonic screwdriver. The doors blasted open and some snapped on their hinges, crashing down onto the floor. Broken glass littered the hall from the lab windows.

Just as he turned a corner, bent double by speed, a smaller, hyena-sized Siren Hound flew over the Doctor's head and spun around. The creature was lighter in shade, or possibly translucent. It shifted back and forth, incoherent noises tumbling out of its jaws, shimmering. It left bloody pawprints on the while tiles. It made a leap for his jugular, but he threw himself against a wall and the thing hurtled past... and then it was gone. It had vanished, seemingly into the wall.

Shaking from muscle fatigue, the Doctor put his shoulders to a nearby snack machine and sent it crashing to the floor. Hopefully this would misdirect any of the hounds that made it out of the stairwell. Then he darted away down the other hallway, trying to shake off any pursuit. Rushing up a flights of steps, the Doctor stumbled and landed uncomfortably on his ankle. He walked after that, gathering his energy. Minutes passed.

He followed a long, winding route through the corridors, taking every turn he came across. How far could he lead the hounds before they returned for easier prey? Turning around a corner, he froze at the sight of a corpse of a woman who had made it farther than the rest. Though, he thought grimly, not nearly far enough. And the kill was fresh... he could see that...

Then, standing before him, quivering with rage, was the largest Siren Hound. Its growl was cut with anger, the vessels in its eyes throbbing, its gaping nostrils full of blood. It stalked forward, every limb shivering and twitching. It opened its mouth and words, mangled by its black tongue and sprawling teeth, but words, still, came hissing out.

"_John Ssssmithhhh,_" whispered the beast, red liquid oozing from its jaws. "_Doctaahhh..._" And then it sprang for the kill.

* * *

><p>Xan, perched on the rim of the stairs curling around the generator, bunched her legs and jumped. The floor, oh so far below her, rushed upwards, but she caught the rim of the catwalk and used her momentum to swing herself up over the railing. Her breath came in shuddering gasps.<p>

A screaming hound fell from the heavens above her and landed on the catwalk, which shook under its weight. Xan sprang upright and ran for the hallway, but a second hound came flying up from ground level in an impossible leap, grabbing hold of the mesh with suddenly prehensile paws. The massive black creature hung, gripping the walkway, and the metal gave way. Xan slipped backwards and clung to the railing, floundering upwards as she dangled over the edge. Then she scrambled back on and squatted on the hanging catwalk like a spider. The hounds flailed, tipping the screeching metal this way and that.

Finally one of them realized their mistake. "_Chanjjj... _" it rasped. "_Chaaannge..._"

And the words were abruptly English, spoken by a human, hands clasping the metal rails, pulling its way up to Xan.

"_Yes_," she whispered, and flung herself forward, half-falling, half-sliding. Then she collided with the now claw-less, blade-less boy. On the steep gradient of the screeching catwalk, there were suddenly two figures, one with its back arched in a desperate attempt to regain balance, and the other holding onto the sides desperately.

Xan saw the young man, with his arms flailing, and was about to reach out to grab hold of his shirt, out of instinct - that was what you did, you were merciful - but her arm felt frozen in place, out of fear that if she let go, she too would fall...

And then it was too late, and the figure was plummeting to the floor far, far below, landing and not getting up.

At that moment the mad rush that had possessed her vanished, and utter horror replaced it faster than it takes blood to rush out of your head when you right yourself after hanging upside down. Xan's eyes bulged. _What the hell am I doing? _she thought in a panic. _What was I thinking? _The bridge was going to break, she knew it was, and she had to get back up - somehow - but she couldn't move, and she'd let that creature fall... was it dead?... she'd never killed anything before...

"Xan!" someone shouted. "Give me your hand!" For a moment, she had a dizzy hope that... Then she looked back and saw, instead, a young, terrified face with thin eyes, and a white coat that was inching down the walkway.

"W-Warren?" she said, in disbelief. "What are you...?" "Just... trust me-" The catwalk shifted with a shriek and then the end plunged down a few meters. "AAGH! Never mind, never mind! Don't trust me!" "Stay where you are!" Xan shouted. "Don't come closer!" She started to edge backwards up the catwalk. "It's fine. It's strong. It's metal. It can hold..." Xan kept whispering this to herself as she moved higher and higher... further from the ground, though... _don't think about the ground_...

She couldn't look back, so it came as a surprised as an arm suddenly wrapped around her waist and yanked her the last foot or so up, and she rolled out of it all onto blessedly solid, unmoving floor. Xan heard one last screech of metal and then, after a delay, a thundering crash.

As she stood up, shuddering, someone grabbed her arm. Warren. He had a cut on his forehead and was limping, but was alive and whole. "Thanks," Xan coughed. "Back there, that was... that was good." "Could have been better." "It's okay. You did fine." She backed away from the drop. "That was... close."

"What's happening?" Warren whispered. Xan realized just how young he really was. He might have been only nineteen.

"I don't..." She sighed. "The man you saw, the one from Waterhelm? In the grey suit? You saw him, right?"

He nodded. "Yes," Warren managed to say in a hoarse voice.

"Well, he's evil," said Xan flatly. "They all are. The fuel isn't normal biofuel, and the company needs it to stay a secret. They're afraid of... the one you saw with me? The Doctor?"

"_Afraid_ of him?" asked the boy weakly. Xan located the side stairwell and pulled Warren behind her down the steps. She had to make sure if the creature was dead. Though if it wasn't, she didn't know what to do.

"You know about all the things that happen around Christmas?"

"Yes."

"If it weren't for the Doctor, no one would have survived them. The woman who said he was like a protector... she's right. The alien warship over London? It would have stayed. The giant ship that nearly hit the palace? It would have turned London to a pile of rubble if the Doctor hadn't been there. That's my guess, anyway. Can you remember anything else?"

They emerged on the bottom level again. Xan had to admit that having the lights low was a blessing. She didn't want to see the details of the shapes on the floor, or be able to distinguish red from grey on the walls.

"My... my uncle said he saw a... fat wobbly white thing come out of his chest..."

"Well, the Doctor probably... wait... what?"

"It was cute and... marshmallow-y... he said... but it came out of his stomach..."

"That's just plain bizarre."

"Yes. I know," Warren said meekly.

Xan, dreading what she would find, stooped over the fallen hound. It was a boy of about Warren's age, or maybe younger. It was wearing a blue uniform and Xan was silently impressed at the meticulous design that had allowed it to be clothed. He had... _it_ had slick black hair and a twisted sneer. It wasn't moving, but Xan saw faint pulsing in its carotid artery. There was blood on its face and on its hands and dribbling down the side of its mouth. Who would have guessed that this was not one of the victims, but one of the slaughterers?

"It's like... a _werewolf_..."

"No. Or... maybe. But it's real. Multiple genomes, fast-acting proteins, cascade effect... Yeah, okay, call it a werewolf if you like."

"It's still alive... we have to kill it!"

Xan didn't disagree, merely said, "With what?"

"I can choke it," Warren whispered. "Or break its neck. Can you...?"

"No," Xan ordered. "No. You have to run. Remember, there are only four... keep their locations in your head. This one's here, and it probably isn't going anywhere any time soon... it takes energy to change back and forth, I'd expect. And the other one in here went off that way, and the two that kept chasing the Doctor, the small one and the large one, those are off that way... You have to remember where they are. The ones that are still conscious or alive, they won't stay in one place, though, so trail them, stay in the places they have just visited, because you know they aren't there now. Cover yourself in something to mask your smell, stick to the stairs. You remember which way the Doctor went? Up the stairs, because the Hounds are too big for the back stairwells, except for the little one. Use their size against them... and you saw what I did, right? Force them or trick them to change into human form, and then suddenly they're no stronger than you."

"I could never do that," whispered Warren. "What you did."

"Yes, you could, if it means you live. Look, I don't even know how I'm still alive after that..."

"I want to go with you."

"No. They're after me."

"I don't want to go alone! You're tough, you brought that thing down! I think I'd be safer with you."

Someone ran up to Xan. "Russell! What on earth...?"

"Not exactly on Earth," said Xan absently. She turned. "Are you all right, Dr. Song?"

"Yes, yes. The little one chased me, and I hit it with an emergency axe." She held up the weapon. Warren zoned in on it and then goggled at River Song. "But it disappeared..."

"Good for you," said Xan. "Hang on to that. Or..." She took it, and River Song let her. Xan could not be disobeyed. She wasn't ordering. She just was the only one who wasn't very explicitly in a state of panic. Xan handed the axe to Warren and turned to Song again. "Find another axe, or one of those plasma pistols... some people keep them in their desks, for defense... silly, really, until now..."

"But I don't _know_ how to use a..."

"Learn."

In River's eyes, there might have been a spark of something rebellious. She nodded.

"Warren, _go_. You have to find a way out..."

"Blast doors, remember? But if we kill all the hounds, we can make it, right?"

"I don't think we should..."

"Knock them out, then... I'm _going_ with _you_."

"And so am I," said River.

"Oh, joy." Xan faced her crew. "So what we have to do is get armed to the teeth, find the Doctor-"

"If he's still alive," River pointed out. Xan clenched her teeth and gave her a look that said that even _thinking_ this would be unacceptable.

"He has a tool that can unlock doors, so we-"

"A sonic screwdriver?" When Xan stared at River, the woman added, "We aren't working here because we're _stupid_."

"We find him," insisted Xan. "He also..." She patted her pockets and removed a phone. "Oh, shoot." The touchphone was broken clean in half.

"I tried calling," said Warren. "There's no reception."

"Something he told me... he did something to my phone... said... now I would get reception anywhere... he can fix your phone so it can call outside, I think. So hang onto your phone, we'll need that. Now come on."

The trio ran from the room with the spry Xan (as usual) leading.


	25. Chapter 25

London

Christmas Eve, 2021

The grey man was accosted by the yellow-tie executive as he stalked from the main room.

"I'm not sure if this was a good idea," said yellow-tie. He said it as though discussing a new paint job.

"You'll see," promised the grey man. His eyes glinted.

"But what exactly are we accomplishing?"

"We eliminate the threat of the Doctor. We eliminate, as well, the undeniable threat of the Siren Hounds. They were useful as tools, but now they are a risk. We eliminate the threat of anyone who might be able to figure out what the fuel really is. And we keep them occupied, so we can find what we're really looking for."

"But what _are_ we really looking for?"

"Something that will give us just enough power to open the gateway."

* * *

><p>Avalon University Laboratories<p>

Christmas Eve Day Massacre, 2021

It happened too fast to give himself up for lost, but doubtlessly he would have, if the Doctor hadn't heard the pistol's sharp crack. A sizzling ball of energy whizzed out from the hallway and struck the blurring hound in the leg. Then a shape - and at first he thought, because of its ferocity, that it was another Siren Hound - flung itself at the beast, not caring that the fiend was more than twice its size. The rescuing creature pinned the shocked monster to the ground and proceeded to kneel on its throat. The hound gagged, shook, and then its whole body shivered. It began to melt into a smaller shape, but regained control and slashed at the feral savior with its blade-like tail. The small beast rolled away, a deep cut sprouting across its chest... _her_ chest... oh, god, no!

"_Xan_!" screamed the Doctor. He dove in front of the stricken girl, holding his sonic screwdriver out desperately. Another crack of a gun, and the plasma bullet hit the great black shape in the back of the neck. The Siren Hound whirled around, saw River Song wielding a plasma pistol in a very determined way, saw the boy charging up from behind holding a red axe, and, most strikingly, saw the Doctor with a small sonic tool and a look of rage in his eyes. The hound ran for its life.

Xan was having trouble seeing. She didn't feel pain, at first. Ever nerve in her body was concentrated on one thing.

She reached up to the man who was now cradling her, his eyes full of fear, and gripped his arm. "You okay?" she rasped. Her throat was sticky and coated in sweat.

"Yes, yes, I..."

"Oh. Good." She gave him a weak thumbs-up.

Then the pain could come. She let it.

It took effort, but she sat up against the wall, with the Doctor trying to get a look at her injury. "Cell phone," she wheezed. "Warren. You still have it, right?" The Doctor and Warren and River all looked at one another, and then the Doctor went back to attending to his patient. Xan brushed him away. "Warren... has... a cell phone. You can... modify it?... So we can call outside?"

"Xan, you're bleeding!" That was Warren. He still gripped the axe, terrified.

"Oh, do you really think so?" Xan said weakly. "It's not as bad as... some I've seen. Got lucky. Got to watch the tails, right, Doctor?" She touched his forehead, and it stung. He realized he had been swiped by the hyena-hound, but hadn't even felt it. The cut was slowly healing.

"I... I didn't notice..."

"Cell phone," urged Xan. "Come on, I had this... whole plan... laid out... don't ruin my fun... it was a _good_ plan..."

Warren tentatively held out the touchphone. The Doctor, crouching protectively over Xan, gave it a blank stare, but then took it. Xan pushed herself up and tried standing upright.

"There," said the Doctor, as the sonic screwdriver hummed. "Now... sit back down, Xan, I _mean _it... call someone. Anyone," he ordered Warren. He moved on to River, whose presence he had learned to just accept. "Is there anywhere with medical supplies?"

"I suppose... we keep things for emergencies in all the labs..."

Warren was tapping out a number on the screen of his phone, which he then hesitantly raised to his ear.

"Right. First we get you fixed up... sit _down_, Xan, you're injured...We'll find everyone else, get them to a safe area... then we-"

"If we can bring down the remaining three hounds, then we have a lot more time to find a way out..." Xan pushed herself up again and leaned heavily on the wall.

"_Remaining _three?"

"One of them's knocked out."

Warren nodded, listening to the ringing. "She took it to pieces," he said proudly. "I saw it. She tricked it into changing, and kicked its _butt_... those things are _werewolves_..." He turned away, listening to the phone. "Colin? _Colin!_ It's me! It's Warren! Are you all right?"

The Doctor looked Xan over. "You took one down? _All by yourself?_"

"It was... it looked like a kid, maybe nineteen or twenty... I'm not proud of what I did." Xan closed her eyes and whispered, "I was trying to kill it." She slid down the wall, ashamed. The Doctor knelt by her.

"You were frightened," he said consolingly. "You were trying to stay alive."

"Yes. I know. And if one of them came down the hallway right now, I'd probably rip its throat out with my teeth," she said bitterly. "I just wouldn't feel good about it afterwards. But I... I could have caught it. I could have saved it, but I didn't. I let it fall. It didn't die, but... I _wanted_ it to."

"You're outside? Listen, all of us are trapped down here, you have to get help! They locked us in and set... monsters on us, people are _dying!_"

"Well, I think you did the right thing," cut in River Song. "If we stop all four of them, then we're basically safe. You should have killed it."

"It was just a kid," said Xan softly. "Maybe Warren's age. Maybe a little younger. I can't just murder someone..."

"Some_thing_," corrected River. "And I thought _you_ were about Warren's age, anyway."

"I don't know how old Warren is, but I'm twenty-five," said Xan sulkily. "I'm not a kid."

The Doctor helped Xan to her feet, with one arm around her waist, and looked around. Warren was still babbling desperately into his phone. River Song inspected the plasma pistol in her hands, and found that it had a pleasant weight. It just felt right.

They made an interesting band, with a yellow-haired Asian gripping an axe and a cell phone bringing up the rear, the Doctor and Xan hobbling along together, and a placid archeologist with what amounted to a ray gun leading.

"How many... casualties?" asked the Doctor, shoulder drooping to accommodate Xan's weight.

"I know at least two are dead," said Xan, "That I saw."

"And I saw one..."

"Three. Three people..."

"Make that four," muttered River. Lying in front of them... there was absolutely nothing that could be done for this one. It looked like the hyena-hound had gotten him, because the wounds were smaller. There was no sign of the crushing bite of the larger hounds.

Xan closed her eyes and said nothing.

"The small one..." whispered the Doctor.

"I saw it," mumbled Warren, moving his head away from the cell phone's receptor for a moment. "It nearly got me. I kicked it."

"But I saw it, too!" burst out River. "I hit it on the head with the axe. I was in the biology department."

"But I was going through a row of chemistry labs when it attacked me," the Doctor said. He was thinking hard.

"I wasn't anywhere near the bio wing," insisted Warren. "Talking to someone else, Colin, one sec. I was just outside the reactor room."

Everyone looked behind them at that moment. They limped on, shuddering.

The nearest lab was down the hall. Of course, it was locked.

"What _is_ that thing?" asked Warren. "Not you, Colin."

"It's a sonic screwdriver," chorused Xan, River, and the Doctor. They all looked at one another.

"Of _course_," said Warren. "_Obviously_... No, them. Not you..."

As Warren tried to convince Colin of their situation, the Doctor attended to his patient. Fixing the wound on Xan's chest was surprisingly quick. It was lucky, she thought, that it wasn't higher up, as she sat on the edge of a lab table. It might have ended up a bit more awkward that way. As it was, the gash was right over her stomach. "It was trying for C-section," she joked. Xan was a very cooperative patient. Somehow, when sick or injured, she loosened up and became quite pleasant and friendly. Xan was well adapted to adversity. It was harder to notice because of the grimness of the situation, but it was remarkable.

"You are really lucky, you know that? Does it hurt at all?"

"Well, it _would_ hurt, wouldn't it? How so?"

He looked up. "'Cos you got me," the Doctor said, grinning. Xan returned the smile faintly.

"Probably you're right," she admitted. She didn't twitch at all when he cleaned the wound, merely watched with serene interest. He apologized when he put the stinging antiseptic on. Xan kept on patiently brushing off any concern for her pain, but her weak, trusting manner was only making the Doctor more sensitive.

"But you're also lucky because this missed the stomach and the liver and so I don't have to repair any organs. Are you in any pain?"

"Not much, so, thank you. How long will it take for the cut to heal?"

"I could fix it in ten minutes _if_ I had the proper equipment. Good as new, too. But... I don't. You sure that you're not...?"

"Tell you what," said Xan, never at a loss for an idea, "You could anesthetize the area, so that I can run and fight and all that, and then when you get the proper equipment, you can fix it. It doesn't matter if it gets a little worse. Better for it to get infected than to get us all killed."

The logic was impeccable. Mr. Spock would have been pleased. But the Doctor was very uncomfortable with the idea. "I'm almost positive that goes against the Hippocratic Oath," he said.

"Oh, it does," shrugged Xan, the historian. "But I'm not afraid to risk it, and it probably wouldn't kill me. But if I can't use these muscles, it _will_ kill me."

"I think she's right," agreed River. "We can't have her slowing us down."

The Doctor spun around and bore down on River. "Listen to me _very _closely," he snapped. "I don't care _what_ your intentions are, but I don't want to hear _any more_ of that kind of thinking! We will not leave _anyone_ behind. We won't sacrifice _anyone_, no matter _how _many lives you think it'll save. It's not my job, or your job, or _anyone's_ job to decide who lives and who dies, who deserves care and who doesn't. Do you hear me?"

River nodded, swallowing hard. The Doctor turned back to Xan. "This isn't just about slowing us down," persisted Xan, unfazed. "It's about slowing _me_ down, so I can't defend myself. And we need to be fast. We need to find everyone else who's alive and get them out! Warren! What's Colin saying about all this?"

"Well, he's having trouble believing me..."

"Tell him to find emergency plans for the lab. That always works."

"Hold up," said the Doctor. "What about the subway tunnels? The secret underground facility?"

"_What_ secret underground facility?" River and Warren asked as one.

Xan and the Doctor exchanged a look. Xan shrugged. "Well... it's _secret_..." said the Doctor. "_You_ wouldn't know about it."

"We... found it. And thought that it went under the lab. So if we can get there, we can all get out through the tunnels."

"You _found_ it... together... look at that, you're already a cute little couple. How long have you known him, Xan? Honestly, I'm curious..."

"I'm not going to try to explain. That would take, like, a hundred and fifty pages of writing. Size twelve, single-spaced, 1.5 margins... why did I say that...?"

"If they haven't blocked off that entrance as well. After all, they know that _we _know it exists. If it really is here."

"Yes... but..." Xan tried to find words for what she had just thought. "But they didn't know that we knew about the place when they _built_ the university. And if they were planning all this time to kill us - us meaning the scientists - when we stopped being useful, they'd leave themselves a way out. And it would be difficult to install a blast door in a day."

"Colin says there aren't any blueprints that he can find online. What do we...?"

"Tell him to get a map of the Underground! Do any lines go near the university?"

"Well, the one that you were on..."

"Any that go _under_ it, then?" Xan leaned forward, and then winced slightly. "Do you have that anesthetic?"

With a sigh, the Doctor reached for an injection stick. "I _really_ don't think..."

"There aren't any lines that go below the university... but there _used_ to be-"

"A_ha_!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Oh. Sorry, Xan."

"Didn't feel a thing," she said truthfully, and slid off the table with ease.

"Wait, wait, wait. I'm going to freeze the muscles directly affected, okay? So you can't move them. It won't affect your mobility much, but it's going to make sure you won't hurt yourself much more. What was this about the old Underground line?"

"It was shut down a couple of years ago... damage..."

"Twenty-nineteen?" guessed Xan.

"Right. Of course. And then the university was built."

"Why 'of course'?" asked the Doctor, wrapping the final bandage.

"Don't you _know?_" Xan said incredulously.

As the Doctor straightened up, he found that everyone was looking at him expectantly.

"No... why...?"

"The Christmas of 2019? Known as the 2019 Incident? You must have..."

"No! I've never been to the Christmas of 2019... what happened then?"

Warren had finished his phone call. He put the phone in his pocket and hefted the axe. River Song was packing up medical supplies. Xan waited for one of them to explain, and then supplied, "There was a meteor that crashed near the Thames. It was like the Chicxulub impact of the decade. A lot of London was destroyed, and a whole group of people working underground were killed."

"Well, that wasn't me!"

"It was like the Chick... thing?"

"Sixty-five million years ago. Yucatan Peninsula. Killed the dinosaurs," said Xan, who was a paleontologist as well as a historian.

"Oh," said Warren. His specialty was particle physics, not natural history. "But yeah, it _was_ like that. I was there."

"Well, I wasn't," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "But I bet it wasn't a meteor."

"Well, that's where the whole 'comet' story started, with the impact," concluded Xan. "I thought all the Christmases had to do with you. But Waterhelm rebuilt the university right after, and there was a lot of controversy over that..."

"Because they built it on top of the _impact site!_" cried Warren. "And there was worry over radiation! I had to do a report that said that the levels were normal, and they were... in a way. It wasn't harmful, but it was a little weird."

"Tau radiation!" burst out Xan and the Doctor. "Well, of _course_ it wouldn't be harmful, then," Xan went on. "But here's the question: was the underground facility put there after the meteor strike or _before_ it?"

"Let's say _before_," the Doctor said, pacing back and forth. "Let's say it was there before the strike. Except it's not a strike. Waterhelm's down there. They're experimenting with this new fuel, but it's not safe. Something goes wrong, and _boom_, half of London turns pear-shaped. So they learn that this university needs to relocate, offer to fund it, and then plop the new building bang on top of their facility. Why do they need it _right_ _there_? There's something the university has, or was going to have, that they needed, something besides the people. Something that couldn't be moved. Something that they couldn't get on their own, maybe it's too big, or too dangerous, or..."

"Maybe..." said Xan. "Maybe it's the reactor."

The Doctor froze mid-pace. "But why would a simple fuel reactor be..."

"The fuel isn't normal. Maybe it does more than... react," she said quietly.

As they raced for the door, the Doctor spitting out instructions wildly, Xan rubbed her stomach. She didn't feel anything there, of course, and then she tested her flexibility.

"...everyone out of the facility first, get them headed down the hallway the crazy exec came from, that's probably where the way out is, we _saw_ him go that way right before the doors came down, and they cover a lot of area, so he can't have gotten ahead of them, Xan, _don't_ do that with those muscles, all right, Warren, call someone official and say there's a core meltdown, they'll believe that, and it'll get everyone in the area evacuated... Xan, try not to run like that, you'll injure your _OW_ that was quite unnecessary... River, get the bag of supplies, all right, let's _move_!"

Xan was the only one of the group who was technically unarmed, although no one really thought of her that way. It was because of her injury that she took the middle spot. She was itching for a plasma pistol, but River Song and her weapon had been practically glued together.

"So where would people go?"

"I think they'd just run for their lives."

"But where would we find everyone?"

Xan was developing a fast walk that worked around the frozen muscles. It was tiring, though, because it used muscles that she never had to work. She made her way up to the Doctor, and he let her lean on his shoulder. "Probably near the exits, or as close to the exits as they can make it," said Xan. "You get the feeling that people would instinctively get as close to the outside as possible."

"Well, I found blast doors blocking the main way out, and that's where everyone would go first..."

"I bet people would try to go _up_," Xan added. "Get out of the basement level. Maybe they'd take the elevator shafts."

"Could _we_ use the elevator shafts?"

"I _love_ elevator shafts!"

"Yeah, I bet you do. Well, they'd be that way. We can see if they're an option."

But when they came to the elevator, the doors were shut tight. Even the sonic screwdriver couldn't get it open. It must have welded shut.

"The more time we spend out here, the less people will be left! We haven't seen anyone!"

Just then, there was a sharp banging echoing from within the walls.


	26. Chapter 26

Everyone leapt back, weapons at the ready.

"It's the _hyena!_" shrilled Warren. "It's coming to get us!"

"Technically it isn't a..."

"In the _walls?_"

"Maybe it lives in the walls!"

_Bang_. Bang. Bangity-_bang_.

"If it was the little hound, why would it bother making all that noise?" said the Doctor reasonably. "_Is_ _anyone_ _there?_"

"Me," squeaked a voice. Almost too faintly to be heard, the voice added, "I'm not a hyena!"

"Where are you?"

"In... shaft... help?"

"Elevator shaft?"

"Yes! Yes. Help. _Please?_" Bang. Bang.

"But it's not even a door anymore!" exclaimed River. "It's solid metal! How did you get in?"

"From... above... came... help..."

"Help..." muttered the Doctor. "Oh! Help _you_? Or help _us_?"

"You!"

"So... meaning _us_."

"Yes..."

"_Colin!_" Warren cried incredulously.

" 's me," said the voice faintly.

Warren leaned on the door. "It's _locked_!" he informed Colin. "What are you doing here?"

"Heard... about... monsters..." Xan recognized the Scottish accent now.

"That's a reason to _come _here? Are you mad?"

"Open... door... please... hanging..."

"No!" shouted the Doctor. "Not in your _life_! I'm not bringing another person in here to get _eaten_. No more of you! You got lucky! _You're_ not trapped in here. Don't..."

"Actually," came Colin's voice, indistinctly, and then he said something else that couldn't quite be heard.

"I can't hear..."

"I _said_ there's an iron door over my head and it's blocking the way up!"

"Oh, _no_." Warren put his head in his hands.

"Why did you have to come down here anyway?"

"Wanted to see... oh, just let me in, before I fall to my death, all right?"

"But _how?_" River Song asked. "The door's not even a door anymore!"

The Doctor was inspecting the frame of the metal. "Well, that's not very good." He concentrated, trying to think of another entry point.

"If not the door, then maybe the walls? Can we break down the walls?" Xan asked.

"They're carbonized porcelain and graphene," said Warren. "The axe couldn't..."

"Then what _use_ is the axe in an _emergency?_" The Doctor really had a point.

"Bashing up monsters, I suppose," said Warren. He pounded on the metal. "You okay in there?"

"Not... exactly..."

Finally, the Doctor had everyone stand back, and he pulled a bundle of wires out of his pocket. They extended out into an electronic spider web that he spread over the door. The wires clamped on and stuck tight to the metal. "I was saving this for an emergency," he said petulantly. "You can only use it _once_."

Once was quite enough. As soon as the machine turned on, it crumpled inwards, and crushed the door like tinfoil.

"We could have used that on a blast door!" said River, who was the first to recover from the shock.

"Yes, I know. And now we can't."

Colin swung in and crashed to the floor. He sat up again and unclipped the rappel line he was attached to. "I do a lot of mountain climbing," he said proudly.

Warren shook him angrily. "What are you doing here? Do you _want_ to get yourself killed?"

Unworried, Colin removed the pack from his shoulders and threw it on the ground. It thumped metallically. "Are there _really_ monsters down here?"

"Yes!" Warren shouted, exasperated. "Yes, and now you're going to get _eaten!_"

"Not if I've got this," said Colin smugly. He reached into the pack and removed an enormous tranquilizer gun.

"How did you get all this together so _quickly?_"

"I... always have a mountaineering pack ready at home, and my apartment is across the street... this's in case we meet any unfriendly animals, you know..."

"Did you tell anyone about us being down here?"

"Yes, of course. I said about the reactor meltdown, too."

The Doctor exploded. "_Why_ did you have to come down here? _Why_ do you people always make it so hard for me to keep you alive? We're trying to get everyone _out!_"

"Trying to help," mumbled Colin. "I brought first aid and everything..."

It was now from the other side that Xan saw herself. She saw herself in Colin. She thought she understood the Doctor's anger, now, at the way humans threw themselves willingly into danger.

But it was true that help would be useful.

"What else do you have in there?" she asked. "Emergency rations and rope and that kind of thing?"

"Yes. Right. That sort of... thing..."

It looked a whole lot more like scientific equipment to the Doctor. He reached in and pulled out an empty injection stick, and turned it over in his palm, like twirling a pencil. Then he threw it back and gave Colin a suspicious look. Colin slung the bag onto his back and avoided him.

"Well, now that there are _five_ of us..." the Doctor grumped.

"Maybe we should find the way out first," suggested River. She inspected the plasma pistol. "Where the Waterhelm man left, that was probably where we should start. That hallway."

"That's what we were doing, wasn't it?" Xan asked.

"Well, let's keep on _doing_ that, then," said the Doctor.

He let River lead. She knew the way to the reactor room. He stayed at the end, where he could keep a close watch on all four of the scientists. Xan noticed this, and let her walking pace slow until she was next to him.

"What was up with that?" she murmured.

"Up with what?" he responded, equally quietly.

"You looked in Colin's pack..."

"It was just... just a thought. Nothing yet. How's your stomach?"

"It doesn't hurt, but it wants food."

"It's a little early..."

"Breakfast," she said. "Not _lunch_. _Breakfast_."

"There's snack machines around."

"But it's just junk. That's not real food. And it isn't very healthy."

"Well, you can..."

"And I'm not going to stop and tell everyone to wait up, please, I want a bag of cookies. Yes, I _know_ the Siren Hounds are off chewing on people's legs, but I'm _really_ _hungry_... I'm not going to do that. I'm just not."

The door was not glaringly obvious. River passed it by without any notice. It was the Doctor who saw the tiny pool of red at its base. Xan saw it next. "Stop!" she called. River backtracked quickly.

"You need to use the _privy_?" Song asked the Doctor. Xan hadn't realized it was a bathroom, then saw the sign. The Doctor was kneeling by the puddle. He touched some of it. "That's blood," he confirmed softly. Very slowly, he turned the handle of the door and pushed it open.

Everyone expected a hound to come leaping out, and River pointed the pistol hastily into the doorway. After a moment, the Doctor entered, trying not to step in the stream of crimson liquid. With a disturbed fascination building up inside, Xan followed.

There was a lot of blood. It had all been splattered on the walls and on the floor, and it dripped from the ceiling. The metallic stench hung in the stagnant air.

There were two men lying on the floor.

Revulsion could not find its way into her mind as Xan surveyed the scene. Someone had ordered it in bulk, and it couldn't fit through the door. To look at the bodies on the tiles and be disgusted felt like a great disrespect. They hadn't wanted this to happen.

That the door had been closed offered little mystery. After all, the Siren Hounds were capable of closing and opening doors. The one that got these men might even have come in under the guise of a human, asking for shelter.

The wounds on the men seemed to indicate that it was the hyena-hound. The little one. Xan wondered what its alternate form was. If the monster she'd stunned was a young man, then the smallest hound would be a child.

_Now we are at six_, Xan thought. _As far as we know._

She looked at her reflection, in the long mirror. The fear in her eyes was stronger and the circles under them were deeper.

She thought there was movement behind her. Xan resisted the urge to look round. Her mind was frayed and her senses on overdrive. No wonder she was...

... there _had_ to be something there. She was sure of it. Xan had turned away, and her blood froze as her mind received the image that had been caught out of the corner of her eye.

"Xan?" came the Doctor's voice, sounding worried. He followed her gaze to the mirror.

Without saying a word, he took her arm and hauled her out of the room, slamming the door behind him and locking it. He leaned on it and swallowed hard. It was the first time Xan had ever seen him genuinely afraid, but he was, with sweat beginning to form on his forehead and blood starting to drain from his face. But in a second, it all vanished.

"Can't be too careful," he said, ignoring the astonished looks he was being given. "Let's keep moving. And no one stops for a bathroom break. We're not going in those rooms. _Ever_."

And when they set off again, he was leading, and walking faster than before. Xan began to speak, a question, probably.

There were two of them. They didn't charge out of the hallways like before, but stalked slowly forward. Xan heard breath, and then a growl, and spun around, the words catching between her teeth. It was even more terrifying now, because they walked with slow purpose.

River brought her arm up and fired the pistol twice. Neither shot touched the leaping hounds, and there was a burst of muscle and movement and the gun fell, skittering on the floor. And then the creatures were charging, and everyone went from standing frozen to full flight.

Colin slowed and tried to pull the tranquilizer out of his pack. As he wrestled with it, a hound came bounding towards him. Warren doubled back and, raising the red axe, prepared to strike. The hound jumped back from his first savage swing, and on the second, Warren lost his grip on the handle. The axe flew past the hound and hit the wall.

Xan realized immediately when the two dropped back, and was about to head their way when the other hound, the larger of the pair, came galloping straight at her. The Doctor skidded to a stop, panicking as he saw Xan face the hound. He caught her wrist and forced her to run. She struggled against him.

"Keep moving!" he bawled. "Run! You can't get through it, you can't go back, I'm so sorry, you have to run!"

Xan couldn't see Warren or Colin anymore. They must have ran down another corridor. The other hound was gone, chasing them. Xan was shaking badly, but she managed to find the balance to turn and run.

And run.

* * *

><p>A Supply Closet in Avalon University<p>

December 24th, 2021

Warren poked his head out of the closet as soon as he dared, which was too soon, as Colin saw it. He pushed Warren's head back inside and slammed the door. Warren hit him with a mop, and Colin beat this off with a large sponge, which was a most unfortunate choice of weapons.

"Why did you do that?" Colin asked, throwing the sponge down.

"Don't. _Slam!_ Doors." hissed Warren.

"Don't. _OPEN_. Them. Then!" retorted Colin.

"The thing is gone. I don't want to be stuck in here. We should get moving." Warren pushed the door open again, and dragged the mop out of the closet. It was unfortunately the plastic-handled kind, so it wouldn't make for a good spear if he broke it. "Stupid mop," he said, and threw it back. It hit the emerging Colin.

"Ow! Stop that!"

"Sorry."

"That _really_..."

"Shush!"

"Oh god, it's _here_?"

"No, not unless you summon it with all that _noise_ you're making..."

"Oh come on."

Warren stuck his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, and pulled out a folded sheet of e-paper.

"A map?" snorted Colin. "You carry a map around in your pocket?" Warren ignored him and pasted the paper on the wall with one hand. He glanced briefly at the number on the nearest lab room, then made a dot on the paper with the stylus.

"Why _do_ you carry a map around? You get lost?"

"Not if I have a map," said Warren. "It's like a circuit, okay? I just see things better from above." He thought hard and made another dot, then drew a route. "I think the hounds were chasing them towards the reactor room..."

"So we shouldn't go there."

"I guess not." Warren saw things better if he had the whole picture. Why mazes seemed so confusing was a mystery to him. Or computers, especially the old silicon wafer ones. They had everything laid out for you. But imagine trying to navigate them from ground level. That was the difficult part, right? "Which way did the Waterhelm man go? Which hallway?"

Colin pointed at a spot in the air. "Ah... like... like that... So, down... D wing." The number on the lab was C43. "And it was on level three, so we need..."

"Go like this." Warren mapped out a route.

"But this would be quicker..."

"I'm plotting a route that uses back stairs only, so we don't get near the reactor room."

"All right." Colin waited. Warren paused. Colin took another look at the map and said, "We go down this hall and up the little stairs with the weird red tiles..."

"Stair E west."

"If you say so. Then, down... I guess the back way where all the bathrooms are..."

"The Doctor said not to go in the bathrooms!" cried Warren. He began to draw a new path.

"Yeah, but he's a little weird, isn't he? Well, that's obvious, 'cos if Xan likes him..."

"But he's..." Warren didn't know how to explain to someone who hadn't grown up hearing the stories, the legends. "He's the _Doctor_."

"And a little weird. And who is 'the' Doctor, anyway?"

"Well, he's... like... kind of like a... good... spirit... well, some stories say he's a god, or an angel, and some say he's a spy, and others say he's an alien, or a demon, or a vigilante-type... or maybe it's a position you have, because there are many different Doctors showing up all over history..." Warren trailed off. He had a dreamy look on his face. "The story I used to hear didn't say he was called the Doctor. But I just _know_ it's him. It called him Kronos. The Lord of Time. They said he could..."

"You are such a baby," said Colin. "He was just a bloke. Maybe some person _pretending_ to be this Loch Ness Monster of London, but if he was, you know, a _god_, then why was he running away from those monsters? Whereas _I_," said Colin proudly, "_I've_ got a trank gun. No more running for _me_." He had completely forgotten about the incident in the rotunda. Or, if he hadn't, he was pretending to.

They traversed the halls less than silently, but the hounds were nowhere to be found. Warren insisted on avoiding the bathrooms. He didn't know why the Doctor had been so adamant about this, but had seen enough horror films to know that the people who carelessly disregard advice and dire warnings are invariably the ones who die.

It grew colder and colder. The whole facility's power had been shut down, and heat was leaking out through the walls.

"So... D wing. What exactly are we looking for here?"

"Anything. The Waterhelm man came this way. Maybe there's an exit."

"Or maybe he's still here," said Colin. "What do we do then?"

"I think," answered Warren, "I should very much like to give him a piece of my mind."

Colin tiptoed down the corridor, feeling the walls. "It's a funny thing," he said, "but somehow we forgot that if we actually found the way out, it would probably be locked."

"And I don't have anything like a sonic screwdriver," added Warren gloomily.

"That was that thing the man had? It can open locks?"

Warren nodded. He tried to open one of the doors. The handle rattled, taunting him. Colin grabbed his arm. "Wait," he said. "Don't touch the handles. Don't touch anything..." He removed a vial of liquid from his pack. "If there's genetic material on the handle, this will turn black," he said. "So if the way out is though a door, then someone would have touched the door, and there'd be sweat..." He began to retrace his steps.

"So... why do you carry around an enzyme test in your hiking pack, exactly?"

He didn't answer. The liquid dripped colorlessly on the first few doors. And the next few. Warren stood, arms folded across his chest, as Colin tried every door, scuttling back and forth across the hall.

"This is getting us nowhere."

"No, it isn't! If we find a door that..."

"But we haven't found-"

"We _might_."

"But we _haven't_ yet, so _right now_ it's getting us nowhere... It might _later_, but..."

"That doesn't even make _sense_..."

"Look, I just don't like staying in one spot for too long..." Warren occupied himself with watching the drops of enzyme spread out across the floor, in little rivulets. "Colll-innn..." he said slowly.

"What?"

"It's turning black on the floor right here..."

"So did you step there?"

"I've got _shoes_ on, I won't be leaving any genetic material..."

"No, but maybe you stepped in some blood or dog doings or something..."

"Try the rest of the floor."

"I haven't got a lot of this left, you know!"

"Just do it."

Drops of clear liquid fell on the white floor. They stayed clear. "See?" said Colin.

Warren carefully stepped on one of the drops and then lifted his shoe. The liquid did not turn black. "Can I have the dropper?"

"No!"

"Yes," said Warren, and took it.

"Give that back!"

Warren closed his eyes for a moment and then stepped forwards and off to one side. He placed a few drops on the floor. Darkness bloomed inside of them. Then he walked on a diagonal from the spot and placed a drop. It turned black. Back to the left. Black. To the right again. Black.

"Do you know," said Warren thoughtfully, "I'm very good at Battleships."

"How are you doing this?"

Warren straightened up. "Footsteps," he said.

"Big stride."

"Four feet. Four... bare... feet. Walking. Not running. The monster. Actually..." he stopped, and went back over the hallway. "I think all four of them. Look here. Two sets of tracks. They don't intersect. Maybe walking side by side."

"How do you figure this out?"

"I thought you were the woodsman here," said Warren mildly. "But the only time all four of them walked together would be when they came from... wherever they came from..." He consulted his map, and drew in a few lines. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing." Colin had been kneeling by one of the drops, holding a pipette. He stuffed it back in the pack.

"Okay," said Warren. He shrugged. The hallway ended by a big service elevator, and a secondary hallway branched off to the right. Warren followed the smaller hallway, with Colin trailing behind.

"That's odd..." said Colin.

Warren leapt a few steps backwards and turned around.

"Don't you think it's weird that this elevator isn't welded shut? Look, you can see the door... the crack here... all the other ones were solid. I would know, right?"

"Let's open it, then!" Warren jammed his fingers into the crack and tried to force the door open. Colin grabbed one side, and Warren took the other, but even with both of them pulling, the metal doors stayed shut. Warren next attacked the panel by the elevator. It didn't take much to pry off the cover and reveal the electronics. But even someone very adept at circuitry can do nothing without tools of some kind.

"A lever!" cried Colin. "We need a lever!"

"We don't have one, though."

"Well then I could... use one of your ribs," suggested Colin, whose favorite movie was _Saw XVI_.

"Oh, yeah, well..."

"Over your dead body?"

"That is _not_ what I was going to say."

Colin stuck out a finger and pushed the 'down' arrow button by the panel. Warren gave him a long look.

"Well, it was worth a try," said Colin. "Rib cages, anyone?" He jabbed the button again.

"Hey..." Warren said carefully. He watched the circuits, then touched the button himself. A red light was blinking in the maze of wires. He looked closer, and then inspected the button. "This is a... it's a fingerprint lock," he said incredulously. "Look at that. I push the button, it reads my fingerprint, and it isn't a match, so it won't bring the elevator..."

"So we go, we find the guy from Waterhelm, we chop off his finger..."

"I think I can override it, though. One second..." He reached into the tangle. "There! Now try it..."

When Colin pushed the button again, there was a far-off clank, and a hiss. The elevator doors opened.

Suddenly, the two young men were very wary. Warren stepped forward, as if to enter the elevator, then stopped. He shivered.

"Well, go on," he said to Colin. "Get in!"

"Why don't you, then?"

"Because... because... 'cause you have the gun."

"But it won't matter once we're in the elevator who went in first!"

"Yes, but..."

There was a hiss. The elevator had decided that it was a mistaken call, and the doors began to slide shut.

"Oh, no, you _don't!_" Colin shouted, and he caught the door as it began to slide shut. Warren jumped into the elevator, and Colin fell in after him. The doors timidly opened again. All automated elevator doors are very insecure. This one was unsure of whether to close or if someone else would change their mind and decide to enter after all.

Warren looked at the panel of buttons. He tried pushing one, but it turned out not to be a button at all. That was strange. And none of them had labels on them, either. Colin tentatively poked the lowest one.

The doors slammed shut with a bang, and the elevator plummeted into the shaft below.


	27. Chapter 27

**AN: PLEASE DO NOTE in the middle of the chapter the HEADING that always precedes switch in location or time as below. Make sure you catch the date! :)**

Avalon University

December 24th, 2021

...and run. And run, sick with terror, with worry, with pain, the doors whizzing past as her limbs grew heavier and heavier. Somewhere along the way the snarling doubled, and Xan knew the second hound was now chasing them. So Warren and Colin must not have gotten away.

Xan was burning with fatigue. Fighting off the hound in the reactor room, then the other, the injury, this. It added up and was coming to make her pay. River Song had been attacked before she found Xan, so she was probably exhausted, too. But somehow it was the Doctor who stumbled. Not badly, but he fell to one knee and couldn't put a hand out in time. He tripped forwards and rolled to his feet again, gasping, but the closest hound flung itself upon him, fast as a falcon.

Xan was faster. She landed before the hound, rolled, and for a split second it was like the train, but ten times worse. The razor tail whipped by. The two of them crashed into the wall. The hound spun around, jaws gaping in a scream.

She didn't move. It would attack her, and kill him next, she knew, but she crouched, limbs locked, frozen with fury, and did not flee. She had no weapon, or strength, or plan. But she wouldn't move. Better, she thought, to die first, so I am spared the horror of witnessing another murder.

What she was going to do, she didn't know, so it was fortunate that the Doctor did. He had the sonic screwdriver out in a flash and directed it at the window over their heads.

The sound was not the one it usually made. That one had an edge to it, and this one was a pure note. The glass rang in sympathy, and the Doctor pushed Xan's head down and ducked, arms over his head, as the pane shattered. And it didn't just shatter. It exploded into the hallway. The hound braked and covered its face, but the shards of glass hit it, slicing its flesh. The Doctor pulled Xan to her feet, crystal slivers falling from their shoulders, and pulled her away. As she ran, she saw a sign next to the window. _Warning. Highly pressurized containment, DO NOT break glass._

_That was clever_, she thought._ But _unbelievably_ lucky._

The hounds were falling back, one of them scraping at its face, the other decidedly more wary. River threw open a door to a stairwell and once everyone was through, the Doctor made sure it was locked up tight. He turned around, leaning on the banister, glad of the brief respite.

The glass had left dozens of tiny scratches on the Doctor's face and arms. Xan had been spared by her long hair, which she was shaking to get the glass out and then nervously braiding.

It was impossible for River not to notice that the Doctor's cuts were healing. One by one, they vanished, and the larger scrape on his forehead closed up.

The Doctor himself was finding it difficult not to notice how everyone was staring at him. He found a handkerchief (anyone wearing a suit will have a handkerchief, no matter what species they are) and wiped his face. The blood came off, and underneath, his skin was perfectly smooth and healthy.

"What?" he asked.

"Must have... the blood... from the hounds..." River wiped her eyes and shook herself. It was odd. Xan had a large wound on her stomach, and a bruise forming over one eyebrow. There was a small scratch on her cheek, and an area on one knee was scraped raw. River also had a few bruises, one on her jaw and one on her arm. And somehow this man had escaped injury. Except... there was a reddish patch of skin on his temple. It looked almost like a sunburn. That was the only visible wound, and Xan wasn't even sure if it had been there before.

"What happened back there?" asked Xan as they hurried down the steps.

"I don't know," panted the Doctor. "Just felt weak. For a second. I'm all right. You?"

She felt her abdomen. "I think so."

"Good, good," he said distractedly, stumbling on the bottom step. He caught himself and headed for the door.

Beyond was the reactor room. If it weren't for the dim lights and blood-splattered walls, the scene was nearly identical to the first time Xan and the Doctor had entered. The floor was full of people.

"Oh, _no_," River breathed. "Oh, _help_."

The hound Xan had taken down was unconscious no longer. It stood by one of the exits, in full four-legged form, daring anyone to try to run. The tiny hyena hound stood next to it.

Then, leaping to the floor from the catwalk, one after another, were the two remaining hounds. The four of them began to circle the room, corralling the frightened mob around the reactor. Someone broke away in terror and ran for an exit, and a hound dove for him.

The Doctor stepped between them.

The hound, to everyone's disbelief, slid to a stop. The tall man was illuminated by the red glow. His face was full of shadows.

One by one, the hounds came forward, moving to surround the Doctor in a wide circle, until half the floor was empty. From an unreachable window in the far-off ceiling, a cold shaft of weak light spilled dustily onto the floor. The reactor thrummed golden. The Doctor stood in an expanding circle of light, and yet somehow he was still wreathed in darkness.

Then the hounds stopped. They stood together, and one of them balanced on its hind legs. Slowly, the spines curved like flowers bending towards the sun. The skeletal forelegs folded back, so that the lower half of each one had two bones instead of one. The long faces shortened, and the shoulders clicked back into place. Now it made sense, the way the hounds were constructed. The impractical forward-bending knees on their back legs. The small teeth - which were still wickedly sharp, but clearly looked filed, and they were ordered in two neat horseshoes. The tails uncoiled, revealing themselves to be thousands of tightly knit hairs, which covered the shrinking bodies, turning into cloth. The skin turned from bruise-black to peach. The hounds vanished.

Four... for lack of a better word, humanoids... stood in their places. All of them had evil, twisted expressions. The boy. He had a slight nosebleed. The largest hound had turned into a stout, whiskery man, with cuts on his cheek. The third, a woman, with a fat face and red hair. The most horrible was the hyena-sized hound. It had changed into a little girl. She looked only half-there, and very flat-seeming, like a cardboard cutout. It would have been nearly impossible to see, and even harder to explain, but she had a label on her dress, and anyone who could make out the words would see that the letters were printed in reverse.

"No," whispered the Doctor. "It's not _possible_. _No_."

"John Smith," said the boy, as if pleasantly surprised. "Or so you once called yourself. To see you again... well, it isn't so remarkable, to be honest. My... family and I have been waiting for a _very_ long time."

* * *

><p>Waterhelm Industries Research Facility, London<p>

Tuesday, December 24th, 2019

The email had been sent the day before. Everyone on the payroll was to report to the facility at once. The word _payroll_ was what stuck in people's minds. The trains that day were packed with white-frocked men and women. It would have been what everyone remembered, if it hadn't been for what happened later.

The sleek, newly installed and updated bullet train slid to a halt in front of the subway station. The tunnel was an older one, a narrower one, and the station was small. But it was there that all the white-coated scientists disembarked.

Except for one. Roberto Hussein had overslept. A long report had been due just before the holiday, and he had been anticipating the break. So he was late, and when he reached the platform, he found no one there.

Everyone called the station Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, because the way into the facility was literally through the wall. You had to wait until the train had left the platform before opening the door, for security reasons.

Roberto Hussein went up to the door and knocked, flustered. He was not sure if he had left his passcard behind or not, but hoped that whoever opened it was friendly. But he was most certainly not going to be absent for whatever it was that was happening.

He knocked again. "Excuse me! Excuse _me!_"

How could it be that he was locked out? Surely they would be able to understand that some people would arrive tardy. This was outrageous.

Finally, Dr. Hussein decided that he would head home. He waited for a train to come. There was a newspaper stand by the entrance for deceptive purposes. No one ran the store, but it was necessary to put out an array of wares. Sleepy though commuters are, the little details really matter.

There were cigarettes and chocolate bars and bags of candy and vulgar magazines. Roberto searched through it for a pack of chewing gum. Then he took a handful of chocolates and several bottles of soda. That would teach them to lock him out.

Feeling very delinquent in a rather pleasant sort of way, Roberto Hussein stood by the wall and ate the chocolate bars one by one, waiting for the train. After about five minutes, he ransacked the newspaper stand again. There was no gum. It was the silliest thing, not to have gum. It was bad planning. Clearly there was something up with the stand, if it lacked gum. People would become suspicious, if there was no gum.

Ten minutes later, he was still waiting. The train did not arrive. He had a sudden unpleasant thought. He had never heard of the train stopping here during the day. He got on in the morning and again at night.

It was a silly thought. Of course the trains ran during the day. And stopped at the station. Of course they did.

He rummaged thought his pockets for some gum, and found that he did, actually, have his passcard with him. Excellent. He approached the door again and pressed the card to the wall.

Absolutely nothing happened. Nothing at all.

This was simply too much for the man. Reaching into his pocket, he removed a set of tools, and proceeded to disable the locking mechanism on the door.

The door hissed open. First petty larceny, then breaking and entering. How daring. What _had_ come over him today? He had been looking forward to Christmas break for many months, now, and was irritated that work was being dragged out another day. And last night, he'd had a terrible dream. It was full of teeth and fire. His nerves were on edge.

But now he was in, and this whole misunderstanding would be cleared up. He marched down the hallway.

Immediately he hit up against a barrier. It was high-carbon steel and it was thick and tough and it was in his way.

He didn't think for a minute that he might have gone down the wrong way, but he backtracked anyway. Why was there a wall in the middle of the passage? He couldn't wrap his mind around it. If he could have ignored it, he probably would have, but that just wasn't possible.

Luckily there was a back way he knew about. Roberto nudged open another wall-door and sneaked inside. When he found the others, it would all start to make sense again. He fixed his thoughts on this. If he found the rest of the scientists, everything would begin to make sense.

The back way was actually a set of air vents that traveled though the building. Later, these would be abandoned for microtubing, possibly because of what took place on the Christmas Eve of 2019, as Hussein wriggled his way though the ducts, telling himself that everything would be all right when he found everyone. It would make sense then.

Then Dr. Hussein opened up the ceiling hatch and crawled out into the secret area that some of the friskier scientists liked to investigate, wiping his forehead, which was beaded with perspiration. The passageway was low and dark, and covered in graffiti. For example, someone had scrawled:

If E=mc2 and q=mCDT, what is equal to MC Hammer?

No doubt they thought they were being very clever. Another graffito read:

who's afraid of the big Bad Wolf?

Oddly enough, the last two words had been written by a different hand. The rest must have been added on around it.

Someone else had thought it amusing to etch the words: oh god oh god it's alive with the last 'e' dropping off into the print equivalent of a death's head rattle. It was supposed to make people laugh, but it made Dr. Hussein shiver. A feeling of wrongness had been creeping up on him.

The door at the end of the hallway was locked. He cast about for another door, chilly. Running his hands along the scratched up wall, he found a crack on the stone. It was straight and vertical and went from floor to low ceiling. When he pushed that section of wall, it swung open.

Immediately he knew he was somewhere he should not be. The space was huge, and in the center of it all stood a thick column, like an engine or a reactor. It hummed with energy, and black skeletons of steps led down to it.

He stumbled down them, unsure of what to do next. There were sets of computers with the Waterhelm logo as a screensaver. At the first one he tried turning it on, but a password screen came up.

Utterly bewildered, Roberto wandered through the giant room. It was very, very cold. The walls were bluish-grey, like the interior of an old battleship, and there was a similar smell about the place: a fruity but dusty odor of paint or oil or gasoline.

A door, slamming. The faintest noise. A far-off scream. Footsteps. Dr. Hussein, acting on pure instinct, ran around the tall reactor and into a secondary hallway, as someone entered the main room. Hussein found a door and threw himself inside it.

He heard voices. Nothing he could make out, at first, but the words became clearer as the speakers grew closer.

"All out of the way?"

"Yes."

"No one left to...?"

"No."

"Then we are ready to begin. I want activation at noon. What time is it?"

"Eleven fifty."

"Set up the gateway, now."

Hussein leaned on the door, now quivering with fear. The words carried with them implications that he didn't know could ever exist.

For the first time, he looked around at the room he was hiding in. It was smaller, and filled with tubing and pipes and computer screens. In the center of it all sat a glass cylinder, about the size of a torpedo, filled with haze. All the machinery connected to this one device. Hussein, having moved on from quivering to twitching, tried to get a closer look at the device. But something caught his eye.

On a pedestal that almost resembled a sundial, with wires connected to it and a glass plasma globe encasing it, was a... pocket watch? Purple lightning silently emanated from it, and danced on the surface of the sphere. Hussein touched the glass. The lightning concentrated around his finger, a bright, single, shuddering bolt. So it _was_ just one of those plasma globe things...

Except then the container began to fill up with a golden gas, which oozed out from inside the watch. Hussein wanted to let go of the sphere, but he was frozen in place. He heard in his mind what could be described as a voice. It almost sounded like a woman. A litany of words, over and over. _Help me help me, oh, please, help me_. Again and again, racked with tears and fury and agony. _Oh, please, please, help, help me, help me, no, please, help, can't get out, burning, all dead, all gone, help me, help me..._

Hussein now wanted to drop the sphere and face whoever was in the main room, instead of whatever was in here. He couldn't move. He was frozen. It was like his nightmare, all over again. Smash the thing. Break it. Throw it to the floor...

_Yes!_ _Smash it! Break the glass! The floor! Shatter! Out! Free!_ The words hit him like a sledgehammer.

The glass sphere rang and tinkled on the flagstones.

Someone asked, "What was that?"

Hussein picked up the watch, dazed. It stared around at the room. It felt the texture of the air. It pulled him towards the computers, then the pedestal, then the glass object in the center of the room. Hussein realized that the thing was just about the size... just about the size of a... of a _casket_. Of a _coffin_.

_help?_ asked the voice feebly. It touched the glass.

Then the lights came on. He heard voices, real ones.

"One of the screens is still on!" "Someone's here?"

"Find them!"

"The gateway's nearly open, but the power levels are dropping!"

"What? How can they be...?" Running towards the room.

_Help?_ asked the voice again, stronger now. It seemed confused for a moment. Then it stopped. It shook. _NO!_ it shouted. _NO! NO! _Hussein fled the room, gripping the watch. He stuffed it in his pocket. Was this all an awful dream he was having?

Roberto Hussein was not an athletic person. He was squat and heavy, and he collapsed by a fork in the corridors, with the voice pushing him, trying to make him keep running. But he simply couldn't.

Voices. Sounds.

"Where is it? _Where is it?_ It's _gone!_"

"Whoever it was must have taken it!"

"Is it _him?_"

"No! He's dead! It said he was dead!"

"It said... _it_ said... _OH GOD! OH GOD! OH GOD!_" screamed the voice.

"What? _WHAT?_"

The sounds of the reactor were getting stronger. A humming buzzed in the air.

"_It's..._" The voice was one of strangled terror. "_It's... IT'S OPEN! IT'S OPEN! YOU IDIOTS! I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN! THE CHAMBER'S OPEN! GET OUT! GET OUT! IT'S LOOSE! RUN!_"

Louder. Louder. The humming was unbearable. Hussein crouched on thefloor, covering his ears, whimpering.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he jerked his head up.

There was a man.

Hussein almost thought he recognized him from somewhere. A politician, maybe?

There was something very wrong about the way the man was looking at him. It was as though there was a film over his eyes.

The man smiled. "Do you work here?"

Hussein nodded. Then he shook his head, more vehemently. "I don't... not... not _here_..." he burbled. "Lost... got lost... passing through..."

"Ah."

"Wassappening?" slurred Hussein. His teeth chattered.

"Well... that really depends," said the man. He sat down next to Hussein amiably. "Do you mind terribly if I just hide here for a few minutes?"

The terrified scientist shook his head. The watch was chattering against his skin. Like a snake, the man's eyes moved to where Hussein had hidden the watch, and his hand darted out to pluck the watch from him like an apple from a tree: casually, and very, very hungrily. The man held the watch in his hand.

"Well..." he said. "Hello, _you_."

The watch went white. The man gasped and dropped it to the floor. His fingers were bright red, and hissing unpleasantly. Hussein felt a wave of heat coming from the watch, which turned yellow, then orange, then red, then black, until it faded back to copper gold. The man leapt to his feet, staring at his seared hands.

"_You!_" he shrieked. "You _burned_ me! That wasn't..." and his voice turned into a hiss, "That wasn't very _nice._" He brought his foot up and then he stamped hard on the watch, like someone stomping a cockroach. For a moment he stood, his face clouded by anger. His glassy eyes fell on Hussein and he flung out a hand, pushing the man's head back into the wall, and there was a terrible ringing in his ears, pain, so much pain... and then... _nothing at all..._

Then the almost familiar man composed himself and walked away. "You're next," he said over his shoulder in a sing-song voice. "But first..."

Robbie Hoss scooped up the watch, which was no hotter than before. He had gone past twitching and was inexorably creeping towards cardiac arrest. He picked himself up and began to run, faster than he had thought was possible for him.

And then there was the explosion. Heat blasted out from the hallways behind, sound crashed by, louder than a crack of lightning inches away, and the world became a cauldron of flame.

The official story was that a meteor had stuck the Thames, or at least very close to it. The authorities avoided the fact that the blast had appeared to originate from _inside_ the earth itself.

**AN: This is how I would be if I was reading this and not writing it:**

**Middle of the chapter: What? What? WHAT?**

**End of the chapter: WHOGASM**

**And the mystery of the hobo is semi-solved!**


	28. Chapter 28

**AN: First of all, I feel it's my duty to tell you all that the rate at which this story is being posted will probably begin to slow down soon. I'm reaching the point where I want to start changing things, and at that point I'm going to have to actually go back to writing the story. Right now this is old stuff from last summer, but I'm running out of that. And I'm unsure whether to just throw in what I wrote all that time ago or change it to make more sense. I'm so bogged down by work that I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to complete the story. I do know how it ends, though, so maybe I'll just condense the climax and falling action. But for now, enjoy!**

Waterhelm Research Facility

December 24th, 2021

Colin screamed, until Warren clamped a hand over his mouth. The elevator hurtled downwards, leaving the two semi-weightless. Colin bit Warren's hand. Warren whacked Colin on the back of his head. The elevator slowed and ground to a halt.

The door slid open.

"_Now_ you can go first," said Warren, "Unless you want to give me the-"

"_No_."

"Oh-kay then."

Edging out slowly, holding the gun in front of him, Colin left the elevator. He stepped out into a landing, with Warren inching along behind him.

"I can't see anything," Warren whispered.

"Well, neither can I. _Obviously_." A lake of gloom shrouded the area below the steps. The two started to creep down.

"There should be a light switch somewhere..." muttered Warren.

"Well, there isn't."

"Oh, great, no light, no way to see..."

"Maybe it's... maybe it's voice activated, like... er... _computer? Lights!_"

"Well, that didn't work."

"All right, then. Uh... Lights on, please?"

"I'm looking for a switch..."

"Ummm... _lumos?_"

"Seriously?"

"Er. _Fiat lux!_"

"Oh, like that's really going to..."

And there was light.

"You're kidding me!"

Needless to say, they pronounced it good.

"The code word's _fiat lux_?"

"Well, it looks like it."

"Oh, that is a _really_ bad sign."

"Of what?"

"Um. Well. Megalomania, to begin with..."

It was bleached and brittle, fluorescent and cold. But it lit up the huge room, which was blue-grey and high-ceilinged. Computers lined the walls.

"Wait..." said Colin. "I think we're underneath the reactor room. This giant thing here, it's part of the reactor."

"I think you're right..."

The smell, the colors, all of it had a militaristic feel. It was a strange contrast with the elevator, which had been carpeted and wood-paneled, and seemed very executive. This place was all machinery, and it was empty of any life aside from the intruders.

As Warren surveyed the scene, Colin strode up to one of the computers and tapped on a few random keys. Warren shot over to him and hauled him back. "You don't know what those do!" he said anxiously.

"No, look, it's just a login screen. Um... let's see... 'worlddomination'"

"Stop that!"

"Oh, wow, it work... oh, never mind."

"I'm going to try to hack the system. Don't fool around." Warren fiddled with the screen and removed the back, staring into the spintronic circuitry. A minute later, he said, "Is it open?"

"It is! How did you do that?"

"Well, a password's just a bit of simple programming. If you can reorder the... well... you know what? I'll explain later. What's on here?"

The contents of any computer are usually not quite as clear as movies would make them out to be. An intelligent mastermind keeps all pertinent information stored in his or her own memory, not in a computer's. While Colin puzzled over the information pouring out onto the plasma screen, Warren stood guard, his eyes nervously jumping to the elevator and then to the doors around the room, ears extended for any ominous noise.

"If I'm on guard duty, why can't I have the gun?" asked Warren. "I'm a wicked shot in paintball, if you want to know. I'm probably a better shot than you are."

"No! _My_ gun!"

"Oh, shut up." Warren picked up Colin's knapsack and reached inside for the tranquilizer. Colin spun around and tried to recover the pack, with an indignant and guilty expression on his face.

Warren held the bag in one hand and dug around in it with the other. "What's all this mess in here?" Colin swiped at the backpack and missed, as Warren lifted it up over his head.

"Give it back!"

"Why? Should be just hiking paraphernalia in here, no? Do you often carry... wow... handheld DNA analyzers? On hiking trips? No rope, no food..."

"Give!"

"Stop being so noisy, Colin, and tell me what this is all about!"

Colin stared bug-eyed at his friend. Warren was a fumbler, relatively insecure and socially awkward. He was also younger than Colin by about seven years. But now he stood, back straight as a signpost, speaking with the authority of a police officer.

"Warren...? Are you okay?"

"Would this be a reason for me not to be?" he cried, shaking the pack.

"Be _careful_! There's delicate equipment in there!"

"Why is that? What do you need all this for?"

"It's not... I'm still a _good_ guy, Warren, it's _me_, for god's sake! It's just... for... it's for science! It's for study! That's what we do!"

"Why do you have guilty-face then?"

"I don't! You're just... looking at me like I've done something criminal..."

The particle physicist scowled at Colin. He held up the trank gun.

"Don't use that on me!" squeaked Colin.

"I'm not _going_ to _use_ it on you. But you heard about the Siren Hounds, and... you wanted to study them?"

"Well, yes! See the white coat? See the nametag? See where it says, 'molecular biologist'? You know what that means? Means I study things!"

"You came down here and put your life at risk so you could study a pack of werewolves?"

"Well, I should think so!"

Warren was silent. He handed the bag back to Colin, and almost looked close to tears. Colin shame-facedly put the bag on the floor next to the computer and turned around.

Warren said thickly, "I saw about five people today who looked like they were _studying_ the hounds quite a bit."

"You could even say," said Colin wanly, "that it was their life's work."

"That's _sick_," spat Warren. "And why are you acting so guilty about this?"

"I'm not."

"You are. Why do you want to...?"

Colin shushed him. Warren would have ignored this, but Colin suddenly had an urgent look on his face.

"There's a file in here... about _Xan!_"

Immediately Warren was shoving Colin out of the way to try and read the words on the screen.

"I don't know what any of this means! Subject Xan Uhr'sel? That's gibberish!"

"It's close to her name, though..." said Warren.

"Xan Uhr'sel alias Alexandra Russell... is Xan a _spy?_"

"What is this? None of this is..."

Colin looked startled. "That's her research! Why are they looking at her..."

"Oh, hey! Look! That's where she cited me in her paper, see. Aang 23. I was talking about cancer, with astronauts and stuff. This is her paper on epigenetic reconstruction, I read it, it was _brilliant_..."

"Yes, yes, that's what they say, but listen, why would they have any of this on file, and it's only pieces of it, anyway..."

" Here's another paper... I haven't read this part before! I didn't know about this. '_The scientific world_,' " read Warren," '_had been shaken in two thousand and ten by Dr. DePinho's mice for a few months, but the true potential of this discovery has yet to be uncovered. With the recent discovery of endocrine-transported modifications applicable to eukaryotic, multicellular organisms beyond the embryonic stage, telomerase and its cousins on the epigenome can be harnessed for complete cellular transformation. Already tested on synthetic mice, this procedure may be able to heal even the severest of wounds, and the ill effects of old age... has not been successfully used on grown neuron systems however, as it has unforeseen consequences with regards to certain areas of the brain, such as the ones affected by past experiences and early childhood... the synthetic mice showed drastic behavioral changes..._'So what does that mean?"

Colin rubbed his chin. "Rejuvenation. Big words, but those are some creepy results. Look. The synthetic mice received the treatment..."

"What _are_ synthetic mice, anyway?"

"Well, they're like little vats of genetic fluid and generic mammal organs and body systems, and they're hooked up to computers which create virtual mice... Simulates the nervous systems and some of the body systems... so's you don't have to test on actual animals."

"Why would anyone do that, anyway?" asked Warren, confused. "I like mice."

"There's still some ethical questions about the pain experiments, but you reprogram the mice to be healthy at the end of an experiment, usually, so it's better than killing them off, and the programs don't die, even if the real bodies do."

"So what happened with these mice?"

"Well, they had the treatment and then they started acting different. Look. Some became more aggressive, others became more shy, a few actually got smarter... Like different personalities. But they had the same memories. This is mad!"

"And this is all filed under... 'fixation with the familiar'... what's familiar about it?" Warren moved back. "You keep working on this. And, yes, you can keep the gun. I'm going to have a look around."

"But what about my lookout?"

"Calm down. You'll be able to hear if someone comes." The young man approached one of the doors, and pressed on it. It opened, with a clicking as it slid over the floor. There was a hiss of air.

Warren crept into the gap the door left behind.

He had entered a room full of pipes and wires. It was like the engine room to the large space's control room. The air was clear and crisp, very different from the other room, but it smelled odd. If he had been someone else, Warren might have described the air as electric, but he didn't feel the static building up, didn't hear the crackling like TV snow. Oblivious to all this, Warren moved towards the center of the room.

In the very center was a glass cylinder, filled with a white fog, about the size of a... it was creepy, because it was really just big enough to hold a... person. Warren, against his better judgment, walked closer to the cylinder and wiped off some of the condensation on the glass, trying to get a look at what was inside.

"Colin," he said, in a low, quiet voice. Then, realizing he had been too low and quiet for Colin to hear, he called a bit louder. "Colin!"

Colin came running in, gun at the ready. Warren turned around, his hand still on the glass. A film of water droplets was forming around his fingers once more.

"What...?"

"There's someone inside here," said Warren.

* * *

><p>Avalon University Labs<p>

December 24th, 2021

In horror, Xan watched from the crowd of scientists. The Doctor had frozen, and the hounds were watching him with uninhibited evil. They _reeked_ of it. Not that they hadn't before, but now, it was worse.

"Are you surprised, _John Smith?_" asked the boy. "Are you _afraid?_ Did you think you could hold us down? Did you really think that you could stop us?"

He didn't speak.

"We've been waiting a long time for this," said the boy. "For the _fear_. The look on your face. The _humanity_, John Doctor Smith, the quaking ape that lives in you. I've met it. I saw it... weak, helpless, driven by emotion. You can't hide it. I can see the fear. I can _smell _it."

"So can I," the Doctor said. "But it isn't mine."

"What have we to fear now? Please, tell us."

"As I recall," said the Doctor, color beginning to return to his face, "It took _me_ about five minutes to take you down. Or, make that three. Yes, three. I distinctly remember it."

"That is irrelevant," snarled the older man. "You defeated us by a ruse, nothing more." "Oh, yeah? Well, that's how I defeat everyone, with my clever little _ruses_... nothing to be ashamed of. _That_ just proves that I'm smarter than you are."

"Well, you _are _clever. Look at all these _people_," said the boy, as if shocked. "All of them about to be dead because of you... which one is she?"

"Is who?"

"The one I saw you with, _Doctor_," said the woman. "Remember how you ran like rabbits, in the tunnels?" She sniffed the air. "Ahh... yes... she's here."

"Now, that's just creepy," muttered the Doctor.

"Which one?" the boy asked the woman. The hound stared at the crowd, nostrils twitching.

"This one," said Xan. "In case you were going to take all day about it. I'll save you the nasal trouble." She stepped forward and gave the hound-woman a scathing look. "And _you_ don't smell too incredible, either." She folded her arms across her chest.

"Xan Russell," said the boy-hound.

"Hey," she said. "Did you like what I did to your face?"

The older hounds had to move fast to catch the boy. His skin had begun to have a blackish tint, like a bruise. "Not yet, son-of-mine," whispered the woman. "Soon."

"What do you want with her?" demanded the Doctor.

"Oh, Doctor, if _only_ you knew."

"That really _was_ creepy..."

"Xan, what are you doing?" the Doctor hissed.

"What are _you_ doing?"

"Just... sort of... standing here... I don't know!"

"Ah," said Xan, holding up a finger. "I can do that too."

The hound-woman looked confused, but covered it up with a sneer. "You're powerless, Doctor," she said smugly.

The man scratched at his neck. "Oh, yes, very powerless, I'm sure." Then his eyes went cold and crystalline. "Here you are," he said, as a chess player to his opponent. "Here you _all_ are. Working for Waterhelm. Was that their idea or yours?"

"Clever man, trying to learn the rules of the game. Don't you know we don't play fair? _You_ didn't."

"Who are they?" asked Xan quietly. "How do they know you?"

"We are the Family of Blood," rasped the oldest hound. "Once we were weak, Doctor, it is true, but now we strong. Now we do not need minions-"

"Demented scarecrows," said the Doctor. "Straw and burlap. Walking speed of an octogenarian. About as smart as a noodle. About as strong, too. Minions. Terrifying."

"-now we do not need them. We are not confined to frail humanity..."

"Or the life span of a cicada."

"We nearly defeated you," snarled the boy. "We had your heart in our hands, and only mere _circumstance_ took it away. And now we are more powerful by a _hundredfold_. You have no chance of survival."

"Oh, there's always a chance," said the Doctor. "The people you work for seemed to think so."

A long pause. What had he said?

"Well?" asked the Doctor. "Surprised? You shouldn't be. They used you... what did they use you for? Finding me? Well, here I am. What use are you now?"

The little child hound smirked. In a high voice, she spoke up. "Not just powerless, but clueless, too. We don't need _you_."

"What do you need, then? Because I'm guessing it isn't new bodies. You have those. You seem quite pleased with them... no, it isn't that. They've fixed it so you can live a normal lifespan, but that's not what you want, is it? You want the energy, just like before, only now, they can bottle it and ship it to you and give you a straw to drink it with. They found what you were looking for, and you entered into a... mutually beneficial contract. Am I right? But they won't give it to you. They won't give you the life you want. They know how to use it for themselves, and now you're competitors, aren't you?"

Xan put together what was said, and started to build ahead of the conversation. _Of course,_ she thought. _So _that's _how it is._

"Enough talk," spat the boy. "We-"

"Well," pointed out the Doctor. "You _started_ it."

"Do you want to know why you were sent down here?" asked a voice. It was the voice of an oracle, of a storyteller. It rang with the certainty of the tale-teller, of the author of the universe, the creator of the future. It was Xan's voice, too.

"You were not sent here to kill us," she said, knowing it was true. "You were sent here not to kill the Doctor, but to die trying."

The four hounds all stared at her at once. She wanted to laugh. "You're all so _stupid!_" she exclaimed. "The men from Waterhelm know you're a threat to them. They've got a plan, and they intend to carry it out _today_. They want to eliminate all the threats, so they pit you against the Doctor and the scientists here... the only people who could understand what they plan to do! You've been deceived. These are businessmen you're dealing with. They have all the shrewdness of politicians and none of the weak points. You may have been their power piece, their queen, but you're about to be sacrificed, because the endgame is upon us and they know they're close to checkmate."

Light glinted in the eyes of the family. The woman was the first to begin the change. The transformation from human to hound was even more grotesque. The sneering faces became distorted, elongated, the skin turning black. Their arms literally unfolded from elbow downwards, and the clothes unwove themselves, and the threads knitted into a long, bladed tail for each creature, as their backs twisted forward. The boy was the last to become full beast.

"This ends now," hissed the creature, through its filed, now shark-like teeth. Its larynx had been stretched out, so the words vibrated in the air. "You will pay for what you did to us. You will watch them all suffer and die before we kill you. And you _will_ die, _Doctor_, and you will die _alone_."

"I already will," whispered the Doctor. "_I already have_." He closed his eyes, raising his arms in a gesture of defeat. The hounds, eyes full of murder, didn't see his fingers wrapped delicately around the slim grey tool.

"_Run_," breathed the Doctor.

Xan spun, three nimble steps ringing on the floor and pushing her out into a sprint.

The azure tip of the screwdriver ignited.

And the enormous reactor exploded into an inferno of golden light. It burst from the machine, weaving and winding into fiery streams which arced like solar prominences and hit the sonic screwdriver. The being holding it opened its eyes, which were glowing like two suns. Energy coiled itself around him, writhing, and the air shattered with electricity. The hounds screamed in pain, trying to flee. Living fire poured into the figure, wrapping itself around the black monsters, smashing through space as if it were of glass. It rippled the air, and the crowd of people were blown to the edges of the room, scrambling into the exits. The fire did not touch them, or harm them.

Xan was thrown through a door by the force, and someone slammed it closed. There was a glass window on the door, and she leapt to it, palms slamming against the pane, straining to see, not caring that her eyes were being blinded by light. She could hear... _music?_ Not music that was _made_, though. It was the vibration of space, the purest of sounds. It was deep and old and solid, a long, cetacean keen. And it began to falter.

In the epicenter of the light, the Doctor still gripped the sonic screwdriver, feeding the power back on itself, struggling to control it, to make it bend to his will. The fire slashed through time and threw itself, free at last, into the universe... but something caught it. Something snapped shackles on it and reeled it in. It was pushed upwards, and it surged through the steel and carbon and rock. It was sent back down, to catch a snarling, leaping body and fold around it.

In her mind's eye, Xan heard herself ask, _So what are you, if not human?_

_Something called a Time Lord._

From the tip of the sonic screwdriver, and spreading out, the fire turned electric blue. It spat and crackled and fought against its new oppressor.

The Doctor felt the stare, and turned. Standing, high above the reach of the energy, was a grey shadow of a man, with a calm smile on his face.

Rage became wrath. Blinded with fury, the Doctor sent the living fire searing upwards, to crush the man standing so peacefully over all the death he had caused. The blue flame turned red, growing claws and teeth and rising with deadly power.

But in his anger his control over the power slipped, and suddenly the fire was turning, and diving for the figure in the center of the room, and fire became sparks, which became mist, and as the energy ripped its way out of the confines of space and time, the Doctor collapsed, broken.


	29. Chapter 29

**AN: New chapter! Stuff happens! Hooray! **

All around the fallen man, nets of light hung in the air. The space between shuddered as though buffeted by heat. The pale winter sun lit up the floor, streaming through the massive hole in the ceiling which extended up to the sky. The hounds were nowhere to be seen, nor was the grey man. The huge reactor was silent.

Something reached for the handle of the door. Xan was mildly surprised to see that it was her own hand. She drew back, suddenly frightened; she wondered why. Then she set her jaw and shoved open the entrance into the reactor room.

"What are you doing?" It was River Song. Her face was pallid and her eyes wide, but she caught Xan's arm before she could enter the room beyond. Xan shook it off without glancing at Song.

"No one can go in here," she said firmly. Then she amended, "Except for me."

"Why is that? Are you crazy? What's..."

"I have to get him out," said Xan, and there was a strange look in her eyes.

"No! It's probably really..."

As Song spoke, a section of the ravaged walkway fell, and it hit a pocket of shattered air. When the metal hit the floor, it was twisted, red-hot, and a lot smaller than Xan thought it had been. It smoked.

"... dangerous...?"

"Yes, but you just have to... have to avoid the bad spots..."

"What bad spots? It's _one giant bad spot!_ The whole _room_ is a _bad spot!_ Don't go in there!"

What Xan had noticed when the beam fell was how close it was to the unconscious man in the center of the room. She stepped forward, worried.

River grabbed onto the door's handle and tried to pull it shut. "Did you hear me?"

There was something about the air in the room... Xan thought she could see where the broken parts began and ended. Dimensionally, it didn't make sense. She shouldn't be able to see the ragged edges in space. But there they were.

"I know what I'm doing. I just have to... the places where there's... you can feel it, can't you? Rough edges. Like cracks."

_..._ _Time's shattered arrow, bent beyond repair..._

"No," said Song, shaking her head in the panicked manner of dealing with someone who has just revealed themselves to be mentally unstable. "No, no, I don't, what are you talking about? Don't... don't go in there... _don't go in there_-"

It was like walking through a hall of mirrors. Xan had tried this, once, though she did not remember when, and found she had a knack for it. Watching the floor, looking for the slight difference in color between the mirror tiles and the real ones. At first, she had marched confidently in, hardly bumping into walls, seeing the path easily. But somewhere in the middle, she'd lifted her eyes off the floor and looked around and suddenly lost it entirely, and there is no feeling more disorienting than claustrophobia in the middle of a seemingly eternal plain. She'd felt very sick, all of a sudden, because she felt like someone was watching her. Someone besides herself. So she'd shut her eyes tight and put her hand on the right wall, the cheating way to solve a maze, and followed it out.

It was a hall of mirrors where the mirrors were coated in poison. Xan stepped out of the hallway where everyone was clustered, and nearly ran into a crack. It slanted downwards from the right, and she felt the dizzy nothingness for a moment, before she caught herself and slid around it.

Imagine walking though a broken mirror. Now imagine trying to navigate the wheels of a giant's electric razor. Imagine a tall room that has been bombed with blades, massive panes of space that turn the space into a shredder. Add electricity humming in the cobwebs of cosmic strings, and heat, molten edges to some of the blades, and frozen darkness to others.

Xan moved through this all, ducking around the rifts, an erratic path through an invisible maze. It was as though one eye saw the room, the space that _should_ be there, and the other eye saw where it wasn't. What everyone in the hallway felt like they were seeing was mist, and someone walking through the mist, at arbitrary points stooping slightly, or turning her body and edging sideways, and sometimes stopping short and cautiously backing up before heading off in a slightly different direction. It would have looked insane, but she was so convinced of these imaginary fault lines that River began to think, in the back of her mind, that she could see them too. Then the figure faded into the mist, out of sight.

A crash made Xan jerk her head upwards. She saw a pole hit the floor, balanced impossibly on its tip, not three feet away. The top, suspended in one of the rifts, began to wilt, drooping like a wax spire in the sun.

Was it her imagination, or were the rifts becoming larger, thicker? They had felt like cobwebs, and now they were like steel cables. They had felt like gold foil, and now were sheet metal. She was losing visibility. The broken brane was swallowing her up.

He was lying supine, unmoving. The web of cracks covered him, and the fallen catwalk blocked Xan's access. It was now like a jungle gym of tall trusses. She couldn't climb over it. The rifts coated the air above the mass. But there might be a way through.

She squeezed into the cage. By crouching low and entering sideways, she made it through the first six inches. Then she had a choice: wriggle underneath a bar blocking her way, or clamber over the sharp beams. After a moment, she decided to go under. The floor was more stable. Xan just fit through, sliding her skinny chest through the space. A sharp protrusion raked a scratch down her back. Then she was through, and she crawled to the fallen Time Lord.

She shook him. "Doctor! Get up! Please! Come on, you idiot! Wake up! _Doctor!_" How did you perform first aid on an alien? Xan pressed her palm against the Doctor's chest, first on one side, then the other, feeling for pulses. Was he breathing? Yes. Shallowly, but oxygen was getting in there. Unless he breathed carbon dioxide. Or nitrogen. Or _something_. But now, there seemed to be nothing left to do. You did CPR on people in this situation, but both lungs and both hearts were working fine. So at least there _was_ that, because Xan hadn't ever learned CPR. She knew how it worked from movies and from how-to books and mountaineering guides, but that wasn't quite good enough, really.

But he looked so _peaceful_. His eyes were shut, and he had an expression of terrible acceptance, of serenely drowning. In stories, when people talked about the dead, they nearly always said that they looked like they were sleeping.

Xan shook him again. "Stop looking dead!" she ordered. "Wake up! We haven't got _time_ for you to die! Come _on!_"

The Doctor's hand was still clenched around the sonic screwdriver. It hummed, the same way a hard drive vibrates in a computer. She tried to take it, but his grip was stiff and tight. Xan first thought that this meant he was awake. Then the words _rigor mortis_ popped into her head, and she mentally stamped on them. _He's breathing_, she thought. _His hearts are beating... he's _not_ dead!_

Time was running out. The rifts were growing, and soon they would smother Xan and the Doctor, unless he really was dead, and this was just some kind of alien post-mortem vitality or something. Maybe he was brain-dead, but not body-dead. Maybe...

_Stop thinking like a... an unscientific person!_ Xan shouted to herself. _Stop being irrational! Get out of there, and get him out with you!_

But how could she drag him through the catwalk? He was skinny, but quite tall, and she had barely fit.

Feeling the cracks in the air... was there still energy left? How had he controlled it...? _Badly,_ she thought. Damn! Damn this all! And she'd _had_ a plan! What had he been _thinking?_ The idiot!

It was worth a try, though. Xan tried to take the sonic screwdriver out of his hand... _should it feel this cold? Does he have a lower body temperature than a human, or is he just cold, or is he dead?_ She checked his breathing again in a panic. He wasn't dead. She turned back to the screwdriver and the hand. It was impossible to pry it from his grip, which was stupid, because Xan was probably stronger than he was, and she was awake and he wasn't. She knelt on his wrist and tried to press the fingers open. How was he not awake, to hold this tightly? Unless it _was_ rigor mortis... no, hearts still beating, still breathing, not dead, okay, back to the screwdriver.

But did she even know how to use it? No. Of course not. He just pointed it at whatever he wanted and it _did_ something. It didn't even look like there was more than one button, though there was a slider that extended the tip on a clear tube.

There were _three_ buttons, actually, two on the body and one on the end, but did it make a difference if you didn't know how to use it anyway?

Xan stopped trying to pull the screwdriver from him, and instead clasped his hand, trying to fit her thin fingers inside his grip, and she found the button for the screwdriver and, taking a breath, pressed it.

No wraiths of energy reared up to attack her, no living fire came blazing forwards. But the feeling of holding the screwdriver, the tiny light on and the buzz coming from inside it, was not what she expected.

It wasn't just a tool, she realized, as prickles ran up her arm. It was an interface. It was almost cybernetic. While the end glowed and whined, she felt a new set of commands cropping up in her mind, like extra limbs being grown on to her spinal cord. She reached out with an invisible hand and touched the rifts above the catwalk, pushed them down and rethreaded them, and the catwalk wilted like the pole, falling into an interspatial abyss. The rifts swallowed the metal in the way, and the metal swallowed up the rifts, until there was a clear path.

Energy began to creep out of the other rifts. It focused on the newcomer, in a mindless, lifeless way analyzing and scanning her, looking for something, reaching out and probing a hollow place in her chest, somewhere near her right lung...

_No! Let her be!_

The voice was not her own. It pushed the energy back and died away, fading, echoing. Xan released the button of the sonic screwdriver, and the prickles in her arm were sucked back, and the extra limbs dropped off.

The Doctor's grip on the screwdriver had loosened, and it fell from his fingers. Xan moved to pick it up, but his hand had tightened around hers. His flesh was quite warm now, his palm soft instead of solid, his grip both gentle and firm. Shivering, Xan jerked her hand loose, picked up the screwdriver and put her arms around his chest. After a few false starts she hauled him up and draped him over her shoulders, dragging him towards the exit. Xan had to be careful to avoid the rifts, but some of them seemed to drift away from her as she approached the door.

Then through the hallway, and into the crowd of people, all of whom were staring at her, who had watched her as she emerged from the haze, holding in her arms the god who had saved their lives.

Instead of setting him gently down, Xan dumped the Doctor onto the floor. The scratch on her back stung now, the anesthetic on her wound was wearing off, and she felt like she had been slowly asphyxiated by the energy leaking out of holes in space. Which brought up an important question. What were they going to do with the massive holes in space?

With a gasp, the Doctor sat up, panting, his vision swimming. All the scientists jumped back, except for Xan. She walked forward and stood over him.

The Doctor coughed and wiped his mouth. A bit of blood came off on his hand, and he rubbed it away. Then he looked up at Xan, who bent down.

Feeling very lightheaded, he lifted a hand and touched her cheek. "Hey," he said, smiling, lifting himself up a little more, leaning closer to her.

She didn't smile back, but took his hand and lowered it to the floor.

"Oh, right, blood, sorry," he said weakly, dropping back. "Are you...?"

"Am I all right?" she finished. "Yes. I am. No one was hurt." Her eyes were cold.

"No one was... well, that's good..."

She stood up. Her stare was now icy. "What," she said flatly, "did you think you were doing?"

"What? I was... well, let's see... I was saving your life, for one thing..."

"Just. Answer. Me."

"I... the energy from the reactor... huon energy... I thought..."

"You call that a _plan?_" Xan spat.

The Doctor recoiled, hurt. "Yes! Xan, what's wrong?"

"_That._" She flung out an arm to point at the distorted reactor room. "That is very wrong."

"What do you..."

"What the _hell_ were you thinking?"

"Thinking what...?"

"That was the _plan?_ You crazy fool, you almost killed yourself! You almost..."

"If you're worried about me, then I'm all right..."

"_No!_" Xan yelled. "No! You're not! And this isn't just about _you_, it's about me who had to go in there and drag you out and all of us here who could have been killed!"

The Doctor's eyes widened. "I _saved_ your _lives!_"

"Yes, with a _stupid_, _impulsive_ plan that left a lot of holes in _space_..."

"Talk about ungrateful..." muttered the Doctor angrily.

"_Talk_ about _ungrateful?_" Xan shouted. She shoved him. "I just risked my _life_ to get you out of the _mess _you made! How about that gratefulness?"

"Well, I _would_ have thanked you but you started _yelling_ at me!"

"But you could start _listening!_"

"I _AM!_"

Xan drew herself up. "Do you realize how much danger you put us in? How much danger you put yourself in, and me? What you did was _lunacy!_ Just so you could kill those hounds, that Family of Blood? Because they said you were _weak?_ Could you have stopped and _thought_ about it before _blowing a hole in space and time?_ That's what the people who want us dead are doing, messing around with..."

"Oh, and I didn't know what I was doing there?"

"NO!" Xan yelled. "You _didn't!_ Obviously _not!_"

"I had it under control!" "_Yeah, until you_ _didn't!_" she screamed. "You killed the hounds because they _mocked_ you, they called you _human_, and you _killed _themoutof_ spite!_ You didn't think about the _safety_ of all of us or the consequences, and I don't even know what kind of horrible things happen when you fool around with time..."

"_NO!_" shouted the Doctor, getting to his feet, "_No, you DON'T!_ You don't know anything about this! You don't have a clue! How can you...?"

"BecauseI'm_ human?_" she shrieked. "Do you want to know something, Doctor? _I had a plan!_ I had a plan, and it was a damn good one, and it was a lot safer than yours, but you didn't _think_ to ask me because _I'm! Only! Human!_"

"How-?" he began.

"And yours wasn't even a _plan!_ Call that a _plan?_ That's like _hitting_ everything with a _sledgehammer_, that's what your _plan _was like! Plans need _finesse!_ They need to be _well thought out!_ I thought you were _smarter_ that that!"

"_You_ are a-"

"_You did exactly what Waterhelm wanted you to do! You stupid, predictable, arrogant-_"

"_I'm_ arrogant?" the Doctor cried. "_I'm_ arrogant? You haven't even been with me for a few _days_, and you think you _understand_ time, you think you're _better _than me?"

"I may not _understand_ it, but I can _see _it pretty clearly when it's _smashed to pieces_ like how it is in there! It's like a _minefield_ in there!"

"Because you _don't understand it!_" roared the Doctor, "_and I DO! You don't know who I am, you don't know what I am, and you could NEVER_ _understand it!_"

"Yes, because I'm just a little _fleck of dust_ in the universe, but _so are you_, and sometimes if you think you have power over something that's as _massive_ as that, you go too far, and you end up _dead!_"

"_SO WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?_" screamed the man, in a sudden rage. "_WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?_"

"I'm _saying_ that you... no one can... you said it yourself, that your... your..."

"_WHAT DID I SAY?_" he bawled. "_ABOUT WHAT?_ _About the Time Lords? _Is that what you're trying to say? That they _died_ because they were too _arrogant_ to_..._"

They didn't care that they were shouting, didn't care that all the scientists could hear what they were saying.

"I'm not.. I'm saying... you should be careful..."

"HOW_ DARE _YOU!_ How dare you pass judgment on my people! You don't know anything about them!_"

"Not _them_, _you!_"

"_WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT?_"

"I _trusted you!_" she shouted.

He froze.

"I _trusted_ you to _know_ what you were _doing!_ _But if you think you're some kind of deity because you come from some stupid alien planet where everyone's all-knowing and you're from some stupid alien race that doesn't even exist anymore and how the hell do you know what's right and what's wrong?_"

"And you _do?_"

"_No!_ Of _course_ not! Because there _isn't_ any! It's just a paradigm cultures create so they can _live_ and be _sentient!_ It's not out there! There's no right or wrong! There's just what's smart and what's stupid! And there's what's _compassionate_ and what's _cruel!_ But there's no _order_ in the universe, and if there _was_, _you_ wouldn't be on top of it!"

"_And you would?_"

"_NO!_ This isn't some _fight_ over _dominance_ here, I'm trying to _tell_ you something!"

The two were red-faced, both of them near tears, fists clenched. Everyone had retreated, horrified, embarrassed, even.

"No, I think it is!" the Doctor yelled. "_I think it is!_ I think you're just _jealous!_"

"_Jealous?_" she screamed. "Of _you?_"

"Yes! You're jealous because everyone loves me and thinks you're crazy! You're jealous because I'm the Lord of Time, and you're just some human! _You're jealous because Earth treats me with respect! You're jealous because your own planet likes me more than it likes you!_"

"That's what you _think!_" she shouted, beside herself.

"Well, what have you ever done for this planet? _Nothing!_ You just walk around on it and pollute it and..."

"_What good did you do your planet? Did you blow it up? Did it get bombed until there's no life left, no forests or plains or seas? You may have lived on Gallifrey, but it wasn't your planet, and you killed it anyway! It didn't belong to the Time Lords! But you fought because you thought you were the guardians of the universe, and if there was life, then it's all gone!_" Xan had no idea where the words were coming from, but her face was streaked with tears, and the pain kept coming, kept clawing its way out of her throat and as her own voice, but they weren't her words, and she wanted them to stop. "_Were there animals on your world? Were there things like they have on Earth, like whales or birds or wolves or deer or... or bats or whatever you had there? Or was it just some damn desert where you'd set up? Well, it is now! Nothing comes in! Nothing goes out! A Time Lock! What right had you to kill your own planet, your own home?_"

The Doctor turned white. Xan was suddenly terrified. She wanted to stop the words from coming out, wanted to scream that they weren't hers, that she didn't know what she was saying, that she was crazy, that she was possessed. But her voice wouldn't let her, and the Doctor was beyond reason. His face contorted, and then he drew back his hand and slapped her as hard as he could.

So it didn't matter then, because the world turned to black and white, and she punched him in the face as hard as _she_ could, which was about ten time harder. Blood poured out of his nose as he reeled back, and fell, whimpering in pain. He was crying, too, tears of shame and loss and horror.

"Who do you think you are?" he whispered. "How can you say these things? Who do you think you are?"

"_I don't know!_" she suddenly gasped, frightened. "_I don't even know!_" Xan felt sick. Whoever she was, it was someone she hated, someone she despised right now even more than the Doctor. She wheeled around, taking jerky, paralyzed steps, and made it past the corner before she started running.

**AN: Here's why I decided to have this: Xan isn't perfect. And right now, neither is the Doctor. He's still a little bit of that person from Waters of Mars, and Xan... well, there's a reason why she doesn't have many friends. And she is the type to be jealous of the Doctor, instead of falling for him or something. She's a bit stupid that way. She's so intense; all edges and anger and brilliance. This isn't like Adelaide giving the Doctor a well-deserved tongue-lashing; this is Xan not being able to control her emotions. Xan is not really a very stable person.**


	30. Chapter 30

**AN: Well, this chapters is shorter to fit in the other ones around it, and it's mostly filler. Also, I have a new short story about the two set long after this one, called 'Scrabble'. I urge all to read it who thought Xan/Ten would be fun. And it's funny that I should be uploading it at the same time as _this_ point in the story, where Xan and the Doctor loathe one another, but believe me it doesn't last. :) Don't worry. Xan was not quite herself then, you'll find. Neither was the Doctor.**

The Doctor lay on the floor, one side of his face throbbing. He wasn't sure if his nose was broken or not, but it could have been.

The worst part had been the look on her face just before he'd slapped her. It had been too late then, but he couldn't keep the image out of his mind. It had been fear, it had been pain. But what was the most awful was the surprise. She was astonished, and panicking because of it. It was like she didn't even know what she had been saying. She was as horrified by what she had said as he was. And he had slapped her. She had been standing there, eyes full of fear and shock, and he'd slapped her. He had _been_ slapped, many times, but right now he couldn't remember a time when he'd actually struck someone, out of anger, anyway. And she was only a _girl_. He'd hit a _girl._ Well, a girl with a punch like a prizefighter, it was true, but _that_ only made it worse, or, at least, worse for his face.

Half of his face and most of his ego said, _Yeah, but just because she's a girl doesn't mean you can't hit her. Because... that would be gender discrimination, right? Got to be progressive about all this. Got to move with the times._

But he'd been too angry to realize that what she was saying couldn't have been her own words. Where was this feeling coming from? She didn't know anything about the Time War. True, nothing she had said was _technically_ anything she didn't already know... she knew the name of his planet, and it was reasonable to think the planet had been destroyed the way it had, because it had been. But something she'd said, about the desert. And about the... bats? It was strange.

Then again, said his bloody nose, what she'd been saying before _had_ been her, had _definitely _been her.

River Song rushed forwards, and helped him up. "I always _knew_ she was crazy," River said, with something nearing satisfaction. Her world view was safe.

The feeling, the way all the blood had rushed to his head, pounding...

"Are you all right?" asked River, out of habit.

The Doctor gave her a long look. One eye was slowly becoming rimmed with black. "Gno," he said. "I dnon't fink so, gno."

* * *

><p>Nausea was creeping up on her again as she ran. It worked in tandem with hunger, and alongside shame. At least the hounds were gone. There was not as much of a need for alertness, though she found herself glancing behind her all too often, out of habit. Finally running was not possible. She had a stitch in her side, and a wound in her side that needed stitching.<p>

Xan slid to the floor, thinking hard but trying not to. Every word she'd said rang in her mind, as though she'd just spoken the words, as though they were just about to be spoken. It was the broken record, the worst earworm in the world.

_Those weren't my words,_ she insisted to herself, because it gave her some comfort. She tried to push her mind into victim mode. That was hard, even with her raw, stinging cheek. She felt as though she'd deserved it. But it had also been a very handy excuse, hadn't it? She'd _wanted_ to punch someone. The violence of this morning had leeched into her bones, maybe for good.

Wiping her sweat-sticky hands on her pants, she undid her braid and began to remake it. It ended up lopsided, so she swung it over one shoulder as though she'd meant it that way.

What came next? Well, she was starving, after all, and the foil-wrapped foodstuffs in the vending machines were looking pretty good at the moment. The nearest one would have to be the one by the stairs...

Petty change was short and sparsely spread throughout the facility, but Xan pretended not to know this. When else would you have the chance to smash glass, to break something that needed breaking? So often she wanted to, but she didn't like trouble, and she just didn't like things broken. It made her sad afterwards. But now, there was a decent excuse, right?

The snack machine had been tipped over, and the glass side faced the floor. Was there any hope of getting it up? Maybe she could have managed it in full health, but that kind of work required the use of abdominal muscles, and right now those were nonfunctional. Xan seated herself on top of the fallen machine and rubbed her arms. It was cold by now, cold because of the dead power and winter air.

She sat, and thought of mirrors.

* * *

><p>Avalon University<p>

December 24th, 2021

River Song walked impatiently among the nervous crowds of scientists. The door had been sealed tight, with instructions not to enter given hastily by the Doctor after he'd taken a look inside (still, all anyone could see was mist), and now it was just a matter of waiting.

There were two possible explanations for Xan's behavior, she had decided. The first one was obvious enough that it didn't need to be explained, and that was stress coupled with an unstable personality.

And then the other one was that she had been affected by something in that room. As River took hasty charge of the refugees, she began to have the suspicion that it was not only true for Xan but true for the Doctor as well. But now they were both gone, run off to do whatever it was that they were planning on doing, and she had no way to tell.

"This is what we are going to do," said River, for the fifth time. "Everyone head for the main entrance, or as close to there as we can get. We're going to wait for help."

"The reactor... must have been a cascade reaction..."

"You heard what they were saying... I was _right!_ He _is_ an alien!"

"How could we have missed this in our calculations...?"

"To manipulate the energy like that... some form of interface, or field, like magnetic or gravitational..."

"And this is what we're _not_ going to do and it's go inside that room _did you hear me_ no you didn't, not the other time..." River pulled someone away from the door. "If you don't start moving right now, then I'll..."

Very gradually, the scientists drifted down the corridor.

Finding his way to the wing that the grey man had emerged from required some triangulation, but the Doctor didn't have trouble with that. It was only a simple matter of remembering how far you have walked, and in what direction. And some simple trigonometry, and basic calculus, and a certain degree of mental multitasking. Easy-peasy.

He hardly needed to think about it, as he navigated the facility, and this was unpleasant because it left the rest of his mind free, and wandering aimlessly, while he himself headed along precise geometric paths.

It left him free to think about the pain, which was not even so bad compared to the rest of what he couldn't help but think about. He tried his best to cover it up anyway, but the thoughts poked up through, and because of his efforts, all distracting thoughts were dampened, leaving no competition. The thoughts grew like weeds.

Most of them were variants on the theme of anger. The Doctor thought, in a rather distant way, that he probably hated Xan right now quite a lot, and a piece of him hoped for her sake that she was not on this carefully constructed path he'd laid out. But there was another piece of his mind that he very much wanted to give her.

Some of it was horror. A pocket of reason was trying to get his attention. There was even a bit of self-disgust, something he found foreign.

He stopped and backtracked slowly. A patch of wall had caught his attention. At the end of the hallway was a large lift, and the panel next to it had been inexpertly dismantled. The Doctor found his place on his internal map and realized that he had just arrived at his destination.

A raw stream of information poured in from his senses. The doors to the lift were not sealed. Slight smell of oil. Ridges on the lower push button for the lift. The pattern of circuits, the broken pathways...

It was here. The lift had to be the way down, because it was the only one that hadn't been sealed off. By the smell of it, the elevator had recently been used. The push button was a dactylographic analyzer: you needed the right thumbprint to operate the special function. Someone had come here and overridden this, and went down into the facility.

He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the panel and waited. There was a _ding_, and the door opened hesitantly, as elevator doors always do. The Doctor stepped inside and leaned down, inspecting the array of buttons. Another flash of the screwdriver revealed fingerprints on the lowest, unmarked, button. So, shrugging, he pushed the button, and managed to remain unruffled as the lift descended with an uncommon velocity. For fun, he flipped the sonic screwdriver up the air. It spun gently, suspended in the null gravity created in free-fall, only returning to his hand when the lift began to slow.

The doors slid open, and immediately the long barrel of a gun was shoved in his face from somewhere below head height.

The Doctor didn't move, but his eyes widened. Then they narrowed again. Before he could speak, someone shoved the gun away.

"Colin, wait! It's the _Doctor_, don't tranquilize him!" A sharp click and a hiss passed by the Doctor's ear and stuck in the soft wall of the lift. It was a feathered dart.

Warren pushed Colin away, who yelped and tripped backwards. "Sorry!" Warren half-screamed. "We're just a little tense right n-" He stopped as he met the Doctor's eye. "Oh, wow," he said, turning his head to one side.

Gingerly, the Doctor touched the cleft above his lip. There was still blood leaking from his nose. He made a face.

"What _happened_ to you?" asked Colin wonderingly, and his tone painted an unpleasant picture in the Doctor's mind as to the state of his visage.

"What happened to _you_? I thought you'd been eaten!" He stepped out of the lift.

"We got away. Did one of the monsters get you, then?" said Warren, following the Doctor out as if he were a zoo attraction.

Which gave the Doctor the feeling that he probably looked like one. "In a way," he said vengefully. He concentrated on the room. It was massive, and very forbidding.

"Are you _all right?_" insisted Colin, retrieving the tranquilizer dart and trotting back down the stairs.

The Doctor turned around. "Do I really look that awful?"

The two men exchanged glances.

"Not that bad," said Colin hastily.

"Hard to notice, really. Just... in the wrong light, it's a little..."

"Surprising!" finished Colin desperately. "Startling!"

"We're a little tense right now," repeated Warren.

"Yeah, so we..."

They trailed off, and the Doctor gave them a long-suffering look.

Warren relented first. "It's pretty... gross..." he said sympathetically.

"_Gross_? My face is _gross_?"

"Only a little!"

"There's a sort of bruise around your left eye," Colin described, "and is your nose _broken?_" He felt it. "No. I don't think so, no," the Doctor said in a panicky voice.

"And there's... looks like sunburn, like a bad sunburn, on your forehead."

The Doctor touched his temple. It felt raw, and peeling. Odd.

"It looks like... were you... did you fight one off? Did it...?"

"No, actually. I... er... someone punched me in the face."

"What? Who did?"

He hesitated, and then said, "Xan."

Horror filled the faces of the two scientists. "Oh my god! Are you well? How bad is it? Do you feel _faint_ at all?" asked Colin fearfully.

"Sit down, sit down, you might be _concussed_," Warren urged.

The nosebleed was acting up again. The Doctor tipped his head back and pinched the bridge of his thin nose. He had begun to worry about blood loss, because he'd been losing _buckets_ before, but he hadn't thought of concussion. It seemed likely.

"So I guess you two aren't getting on very well, haha," said Colin, with a nervous laugh, as though trading a bit of humorous gossip.

Still holding his nose, the Doctor said, " Gno, cosh shaysh a crayshy _bish_, dash shwoy."

"Oh. I'm... sorry to hear that... kind of... wow..."

He hung his head forward again. "And she was wrong anyway," he muttered. "_So!_ _Right_ then. What do we have here? Computers? Full of commands and controls and all that, very good... now, let's see if we can do anything about those big metal _doors _blocking all the exits, shall we?"

**AN: Remember! Read 'Scrabble'! It needs some love. And it's about Scrabble. Which is awesome.**


	31. Chapter 31

**AN: Another shorty McShort freak chapter.**

**...**

**I'm sorry I subjected you to that sentence up there. I hope you enjoy life never having to hear the phrase 'shorty McShort freak' ever again.**

* * *

><p>Avalon University<p>

December 24th, 2021

A rumble rang though the walls. Xan got to her feet, blinking away wetness, and started towards the end of the hall. And kept walking, and up a flight of stairs, and in the next hall, windows adorned the walls, letting beautiful, fresh sunlight though, cutting away the dark, leaving her blinded for a few lovely seconds.

The blast doors had opened. They must have. Because here was the way out. She ran through hall and hit up against an emergency exit. Would it be too much to ask for them to be unlocked?

They swung open, and a cold blast of air came through. As winter sucked her in, her mind dulled again. It made no difference, out or in. But at least she could get out, and keep walking, down the streets, past the row of police cars and officers, away from the paramedics anxiously waiting, having been notified about a reactor failure. She hid from them, having had her fill of doctors. The cold air numbed the wound, which she realized was beginning to heal. He _must_ have done something more to it that anesthesia... but she preferred not to dwell on that. She realized, a bit forlornly, that her jacket was gone. Xan was the type of person to attach to objects. She wanted a feeling of familiarity, because she felt lost inside. And, of course, it was a nice _warm_ jacket. Her shirt was thin and torn.

At a certain point, her mind stopped, and turned into a looking-glass. Beyond was... emptiness, maybe. It looked like emptiness, through the mirror, but the thing about mirrors was, they trick you into seeing more space, when there's really a wall. You think you've reached the end, but maybe, just maybe, there's something on the other side. Think with your hands, not your eyes.

_I don't know. I don't even know who I am_. Because there's a mirror in the way. How can you see beyond what is not there?

She sank to the ground by a bare, dead tree in an alleyway. The wind was less harsh there.

Words. Snatches of truth. They rolled around in her head like ball bearings. They came together, in measure and meter. Or maybe she should make that metre, because she _was _in London.

A poem?

How can you see... no, _gaze_, it was _gaze_, wasn't it... How can you gaze...

No, wait. That was the second verse, right? She went over the second verse, and turned the metal detector of memory to the sands of thought.

Mirrors, she thought. Come on. Give me something. Mirrors. The words are just hiding somewhere, but I know they're in there, and maybe they mean something...

_The graying stupor of the present mind,_

_Is spread far out into a silvered pane,_

_Reflecting what's before you and behind,_

_Each image in each instant just the same,_

_You find that thought has not a gift to lend,_

_Each moment seeks dimensions but no more,_

_Impossibly suspended with no end,_

_Each self is searching, yearning for a door._

_And crumpled like in sodden tissue folds,_

_Ensnared are dullness, sadness, and despair,_

_Within a loop which strangles as it holds,_

_Time's shattered arrow, bent beyond repair._

_How can you reach reflections? Or be free?_

_As time drags on with nothing left for me._

_How can you gaze beyond what is not there?_

_You shuffle back and forth like passers-by,_

_Each wanting to give way to mirror stare,_

_Each mimicked movement yet another try,_

_And then to run and headlong meet their rush,_

_Sink into tar pits of arrhythmic grime,_

_How can you paint with any kind of brush,_

_The color of the passage of the time?_

_If only you could melt your way to rest,_

_Or fix your mind upon a useful goal,_

_You're only living half a life at best,_

_And with no gap you'll never find the whole._

_How can you find with any kind of rhyme,_

_The color of the passage of the time?_

_How can you find your way through the years,_

_Once more feel sunlight, any light at all?_

_The rays that warm you splinter hidden tears ,_

_A spectrum on the shadows on the wall._

_And mirror glass will one day windows be,_

_Your prison now a prism in the dark,_

_And when once more the fire burns, you'll see_

_A thousand candles from a single spark,_

_But beating on the walls that form my cage,_

_Crying out for water, then for air,_

_Walking through a maze of all my age,_

_Entombed in ice, the crystals of despair,_

_I drag my soul through shards of glass and rock,_

_Imprisoned by the rhythm of the clock._

She was a little proud that she was still word-perfect after all this time... But her memory was very good, when it came to anything but her past. How long ago had it been since she read it, let alone wrote it? _Study in Light Black_.

But it was as though the words had always been there, hadn't they? Whenever she thought of mirrors, the words would come rushing forward. Every single time...

The second verse had come first. The rest had been built around it. She could tell. The second verse came to her easiest.

What was it really about, though? That second verse, the precursor, the seed, hadn't been about mirrors. The images were there, but really the idea was... was something else...

Parts of it didn't quite fit in. Or, they did, but they also stood out, and the rest was just filler.

Because she didn't have anything better to do, Xan sat on a stoop and picked apart the poem in her head, laying each piece aside and sorting them by length, as though it was a tangle of chromatin in a test tube.

_How can you gaze beyond what is not there?_ Beyond the end of her mind, of her memories? Was there no end, or nothing beyond? Was it real? How can you see past an illusion of a barrier? And then, after it: _You shuffle back and forth like passers-by_... there really should be a name for that phenomenon... it was so common... so you can't get past because you're blocked by yourself, on the other side... but you aren't really there? How can you get around yourself? And if you aren't really there... It was like that old Native American myth, of the goddess who, when she grew old, started walking west (or maybe east) and kept going, until she met her young self, walking from the east (or west... anyway, it was the other direction) and in that way her youth was restored.

Like a time loop. Looping around in a mirror. _Each moment seeks dimensions but no more... Time's shattered arrow, bent beyond repair._ That actually came close to describing the situation she was in... But it meant more than that. It wasn't this one instance, it was a lifetime of bending and twisting, that's what it felt like... _Each self is searching, yearning for a door_. More than one self? All the reflections. _You're only living half a life at best..._ what would that be like, half of a life? Body without mind, mind without body? Or maybe split evenly. _And with no gap you'll never find the whole._ Bit of wordplay there. _And when once more the fire burns, you'll see/A thousand candles from a single spark._ And that made her think of the terrible energy, the self-fueling, backwards-powered energy, and the way it burned through space and time. _But beating on the walls that form my cage... blah blah, this part is filler... walking though a maze of all my age..._ Of _all_ my age? I'm not that old. _I drag my soul... filler filler... imprisoned by the rhythm of the clock._

It was a fancy way of describing both boredom and depression, which sometimes feel alike, but parts of it felt like they were talking about something else. There were two motifs, really: mirrors, and time, stagnant time. _The color of the passage of the time..._ because mirrors don't have any color, do they? And neither does time...

If it meant anything, it was hard to tell, because the lovely thing about a poem is that you could change it around to fit whatever theme you wanted. Who knew what the author really meant? You could make it simple, or incredibly twisted and intricate, but it was all true.

Except... she _did_ know what the author meant, because _she_ had written the thing. What had she meant? Or, more importantly, what did it mean _now?_ Because what it meant to her _now _would be where the truth was; it was like a Rorschach Test. The truth was in what she saw in it...

So gimme some truth.

The first line. Boredom. Sure. Nothing yet.

The second. The third. _Before you and behind_... past and future...

The fourth. _Each image_... the same... unchanging... no, nothing there.

The fifth, sixth. Wait. _Impossibly... no end..._ I thought about the goddess, the one who lives forever because she keeps her youth... The first line: graying. Third verse... _all the years..._ I can't jump around like this...

She found a sharpie in her pocket and scribbled the poem on the sidewalk, so she didn't have to keep remembering it. In the corner of her mind, she wondered if she was going insane.

She began to underline words: _graying, no end, time drags on, all the years, all my age._ _It's as though I was talking about growing old... that makes no sense..._

Xan wiped her eyes, which were watering from staring at the words, and drew dashed lines under other words: _time, moment, present, clock..._ and on and on. Then: _silvered pane, mirror, reflections, _and _prism..._ _Holds, free, searching, tar pits, no gap, prison, maze, cage, entombed, imprisoned._

And she leaned forward, palms against the footpath, and circled the word _door,_ and _find the whole_. She drew an arrow connecting them, and then wrote by the poem the words: _age, time, mirrors, trapped, light and color_.

Xan began to cross out words, slowly, deliberately, erasing the filler. She crossed out where it spoke of mirrors: mirrors were the key to the information because they led to the poem, nothing more. She had got down to:

_graying present,_

_before you and behind,_

_seeks dimensions _

_Impossibly suspended with no end,_

_Each self is searching for a door._

_crumpled within a loop which strangles as it holds,_

_Time's shattered arrow_

_How can you be free?_

_As time drags on with nothing left_

_How can you gaze beyond what is not there?_

_You're living half a life,_

_with no gap you'll never find the whole._

_the color of time_

_through all the years_

_rays splinter hidden tears_

_Your prison now a prism in the dark,_

_And when once more the fire burns, you'll see_

_A thousand candles from a single spark,_

_walls that form my cage,_

_maze of all my age,_

_Entombed in ice_

_my soul_

_Imprisoned by the rhythm of the clock._

Xan then crossed out _before you and behind_ and wrote _past and future._ Then she looked at the original words, and wrote by it: _past and future look like present, reflections, but are dimensionless_ and erased the third line of the abridged poem. _Impossibly suspended_ became _not aging, not living, stasis_. Then she shut her eyes tight and moved on to _living half a life_, which moved up to 'stasis' because it worked there. _It's not about what the poem was supposed to mean,_ she thought. _It's about what I make of it, right now, what's inside my head._

Then she looked at _How can you gaze_ and thought back, looked to the top, and wrote, next to _past and future_: _how can you look into the past or future when they are illusory reflections of the present?_ She felt so much more comfortable writing it all out, because when she was writing, ideas that made no sense poured into her, and turned into truth, and she wrote the words, _no memory_. Beside _entombed in ice_ she wrote the word _winter_ and then, feeling silly, staring around herself at frosted store windows and wreaths, she wrote, _Christmas_.

And when she returned to _a thousand candles from a single spark_, she jolted, and suddenly knew what to put there. _Biofuel_, she wrote. _Huon energy._

It became a chain: _huon energy - Christmas - regeneration - not aging - when once more the fire burns - doesn't mean freedom, etc., neccessarily_ (and then she realized she'd spelled 'necessarily' wrong, because in Latin it was _necesse est_ with one 'c', and corrected this) _could mean death, id est, exempla gratia, regeneration, b/c mentioned 'massive release of energy' so maybe is like hairs, explosion, drama, etc. - when you die (if you are a Time Lord), will see 'thousand candles' like biofuel - used for fuel_ and there she stopped the chain and turned back to the poem: _Within a loop which strangles as it holds_ and next to it she wrote, _Time Lock_, and she saw the words _rays_ and _splinter_ and wondered again if she was going insane, because everything fit in so neatly to the words in her head, and nothing is that neat in real life.

Unless she'd known, all along.

And that's when the man stumbled around the corner, the man who'd pointed at her before and called her a falling star.

* * *

><p>Waterhelm Research Facility<p>

Christmas Eve, 2021

"The doors are open," said the Doctor, rushing back to the lift and pressing the button. "You two, get out, now. Leave. Go on. In the lift. Right now. You don't have to stay here any longer, move!"

"But... we could stay..." said Warren. "Stay 'n' help..."

"_No_," ordered the Doctor. There could be no argument. Colin pulled Warren forward towards the open doors.

"Do you want to keep the gun?" asked Colin, holding up the rifle.

The Doctor snorted. "No," he laughed. "I don't need that."

"Listen," began Warren, as he was hustled towards the lift, "there's something-" but the Doctor had pointed the screwdriver at the panel, and the doors slid shut on the end of the sentence. There was a rumble as the elevator rose, and he listened to it fade. Then he turned around and walked towards the computer screen, and sat down in front of it, in the delicate, metallic darkness. On the far side of the room, just beyond his peripheral vision, a door was sitting invitingly open, smiling in wicked humor at the words Warren had never been able to say.

**AN: Yes, I know that poem bit was weird. It's how she thinks. She's weird. And I didn't want to cut it because I'm lazy and it would mean going through and messing with later dialogue. I thought it would be interesting to show how Xan comes up with her logical deductions. NOT in a very logical way. In a pseudosciencey way, which I thought it was a bit ironic. Also it shows how confused she is right now. It's almost like something's _giving_ her the answers...**


	32. Chapter 32

**AN: This is nearly the point where I must resume writing... so relish the fast updates while you can. Weird little shifting between points of view in the last bit, just to warn you.**

Streets of London

Christmas Eve, 2021

The man was running at full tilt, gasping for breath. Xan got to her feet and whirled into his path, becoming a sudden obstacle rearing up from the pavement. She caught the man, R. Hussein, and held on grimly, the sharpie marker falling to the ground.

"Stop!" hissed Xan. "I'm not in the mood for nonsense! Who are you?"

The man gasped for breath. He was terribly skinny, and had a wild look in his eyes. But his mind began to relax as he heard the voice. He always knew what to do when he heard the voice.

Xan stared at the disheveled man, wondering how he could ever have been a Waterhelm employee, a scientist. He was brown-skinned, and black-haired, but his eyes were wide and round and bright cornflower blue. It was a strange combination.

"Who are you?" she asked again, fiercely. "Is your name R. Hussein?"

The ragged man swayed. The voice never asked him his name...

"Tell me _right now!_"

How could he obey? He hardly knew the answer.

"Please? Are you... are you all right...?"

He drew in a sudden breath, and it rattled. A gasp, she realized.

The voice... the voice was _real!_ A _person!_ She was a _person!_ It was a _person!_ The man fell to the ground, weak. Then his giant blue eyes opened. He was not exactly a young man, but he was not old, either. Layers of fat having fallen away from his body from long months of wandering, Xan tried to guess his age. Maybe as old as the Doctor appeared to be. Maybe less, maybe more.

"Are you... all there... oh, forget this! What the hell's wrong with you?"

"I don't know," said Roberto vaguely.

Xan started. "So you can talk... sense?"

"I believe so," he said carefully, almost sadly.

She burst out, "So why didn't you _before?_"

"The man... you were with."

"Oh," said Xan bitterly. "_Him_. What about him?"

"My name... is Roberto... Hussein..." whispered the man through cracked lips.

Xan waited.

"I worked... underground..."

"In a facility? Get in through the subways...?"

"Yes! Yes! You know it?"

"It was memorable... and not very friendly..."

"The voice... it... I found it... but then, thought it was safe, gave it to... but then, found it again..."

"What... voice...?" Hussein's habit for ellipses was infectious.

"I was in a... room... found it, and there were men... a man... explosion... They said that something had gotten out, gotten loose, it really scared them, and I saw someone... he looked at the watch and it burned him and he stepped on it and went back inside and everything exploded... I can't remember, but I have to tell someone..."

"Mister... Mister Hussein, was this in _2019_?"

"Yes..."

"Tell me what happened!"

But he had lost his voice, and another one rose up in his head. He looked behind him. _Be careful... now! she is the one! Please! Help me! Free! They are coming!_

He shuddered, and reached in his coat. "Is this... yours? I found it by your house..."

"You know where I _live?_" she asked angrily.

"I... think it's yours... it sounds like you..." He dropped something to the ground. A golden-brass fob watch on a chain clinked on the sidewalk. She dove for it, thinking, _It _sounds_ like me? _Xan held it in her hands. It was very warm, no doubt from the machinery inside. When she held it to her cheek, she could hear it pulsing slightly.

_It all started... when you woke me up... to see... the Doctor..._

An echo of her own voice floated back. _I drag my soul through shards of ice and rock,/Imprisoned by the rhythm of the clock._

The watch was _very_ warm. It trembled in her hands. She sat down and rubbed it without thinking, as though calming a scared puppy.

The underside of the watch was ridged and rough. Xan turned it over, staring at the circles and swirls cut into the metal. Then her eyes nearly popped out of her head.

Xan jumped to her feet. How long had she had the watch? She couldn't remember anymore. She could hardly remember anything! But the symbol on the back... she'd assumed it was a decoration, sometimes wondering why it was asymmetrical. It was like the year after she'd begun to study Latin, and suddenly familiar words that she'd never understood began to turn in her mind into meaning, when she could suddenly translate them. The symbol on the back...

The symbol on the back was writing. Alien writing.

Time Lord writing.

She ran her thumb over the symbols, finding the translation of each phoneme simple. There was the delicate 'zha', an 'x'. Then, the mark that gave it an 'ah' sound, and an 'n'... tiny moon, that meant new word. 'Ehr' or 'uhr' and a vowel stop, and 'seh' and 'ahl'. _Xan Uhr'sel._ Falling star.

And images. Memories.

_The filmed-over glass, feeling the synapses inside, fear, bad thing, bad thoughts, and trying to escape. The hand closed over her, not her own, the white-hot anger, and before that, the terrible machine..._

Backing up, preparing to run, Xan stuffed the watch into her pocket. "I... I have to go," she said as anxiety rose like acid in her gut. Was it too late? She twisted and sprinted out of the alley.

She had taken only a few steps out into the street when she heard the gunshot.

Fear dug into her like the claws of a cat. She flattened herself against the wall, and turned her head to look into the alley.

On the cobbles lay a bundle of rags. Two men in suits were searching the pile... the body... It was the homeless man. Xan didn't have to guess what the men were looking for. Whoever Roberto Hussein had been once, now he had nothing. No money, no memory, and only a few possessions. No life, not anymore.

Neither of the two assassins was the grey man, but Xan knew who they came from. And just then, one of them lifted his head and saw her looking into the alley. She jerked her head back as the gun fired.

Running from a man with a handgun is nothing like running from anything else. It doesn't matter how fast you are, or how much of a lead you have. He is always right behind you. Your muscles are in a state of schizophrenic panic, always anticipating the crack and the sudden pain, and you can't dodge fast enough, can't find a turn. You can run and run but never escape.

Xan stayed in the streets, trusting the men not to be so stupid as to fire out in the open. She was not far from the university, but the way had too many open stretches. Her sinuses burned, but she kept moving. It was incredible how fast you find you can run, when properly motivated.

So fast that only the tips of your toes touch the ground with every step. So fast that air turns solid, and whistles through the gaps of your teeth. So fast that even on a winter day, you begin to sweat. So fast that pain means nothing. Because it's either the pain or nothing at all.

Under the blue sky, there was shelter. The people she shot by, staring at her in perplexed numbness. The cars in the street, the noise of traffic, of honking and shouting and the engines of the busses. Stupid people stay in the alleys. Never take a battle to private quarters, unless you have the upper hand.

Behind her, she could feel the space where the barrel of a gun could be. She turned on a dime and raced off to the left. Was she being followed, still?

And, there, an iron stairway to heaven. _Thank you, Zeus, Re, and Odin, for fire escapes._ It took nothing more than a leap and a flurry of simian movement to scamper up the ladder, and dash up the steps three at a time. Higher, higher, until there, in its square and radiator-topped glory, was the roof.

Looking over the edge was the hardest part. As she drew near, her feet tingled painfully, trying to walk her away.

In the flat below, someone heard footsteps on the ceiling. They turned to their friends. "Some fool person's up on the roof," the man said meditatively. "I wonder what that's all about."

"It's Christmas," said the host, who knew of such things. "You get used to it."

Xan peeked over the edge of the roof, and shuddered. It was hard to get a good look at the streets, but she thought she could make out the two men shoving their way through the crowd. She saw the line of police officers around the university, the yellow tape, the firemen marching inside, the haz/mat suits following. And the grey and black vans, with blue headlights, with men in suits in carefully placed blocks. Guards. They all have their wireless sets; they can communicate with one another, and they're looking for me...

The men who were out on the streets, the ones who had killed... All of it carefully set up, no doubt, and ready to execute the plan... Far away, across a chessboard of rooftops, was the tall, ornate clock, Big Ben, that was _just too far away to read..._ no. She could see the hands, and they were close to the top. Xmas At Noon. Xan had forgotten her wristwatch, and she thought to check the watch in her pocket, but dismissed the idea. It was broken, wasn't it? Somehow the idea that it was broken had filtered into her mind.

Every day, at noon, starting that first day: a slip. A break. A stutter... whatever it was happened at noon, and today was the day they would complete it. Had there been a couple of days, leading up to the disaster in 2019, where there were these irregularities? But tell me if I'm wrong, and I'm rarely wrong, but wouldn't it be impossible to feel a disturbance in time? If it shifts, we shift with it. If it tears, so do we, but we can't feel it happen. No one did. No one noticed but me...

Noon. _The rays that warm you splinter hidden tears..._ pretend, for a moment, that rhyming is irrelevant. Hidden _tears_, tairs, not teers... rips. The rays that warm you... the sun, maybe, the sun at its peak... or the rays, like gamma rays... _ray_diation, tau radiation... hidden tears (teers), sorrow that's been holed away; hidden tears (tairs), rips you can't see... And even if this makes no sense with the poem, it's what I can't keep out of my mind... it's what I _know_.

The roofs, like a chessboard across the city, and there's the Queen and King at the palace, and the Bishops in the Abbey, and the Castles, and the Knights... um... somewhere around here... maybe that would be me! Or the Doctor... two steps forward and one to the side, over obstacles, like how you fly in the time machine, and all the pawns in the streets.

Or maybe the King and Queen... are him and me...

No, that's wrong. We're _both_ the queen right now... I used to be a pawn, but I reached the edge of the world and turned into a queen, and we're the queens because we can move through it all and we are most powerful and we protect the King... which is Earth. It can't move much on its own, but it's the King, the center piece and we have to be ready to sacrifice ourselves for it, because in the end, we don't matter... Only the world.

And we're in check.

She moved.

Down in the streets, a pair of men in suits stalked towards the alley. They were not exactly hired thugs. There had been no time for that. They could not risk losing what needed to be obtained.

In a rattle of metal, a shape fell from the fire escape and landed behind the men. As the first one turned, a fist swung forward and knocked him over.

Xan had practiced martial arts, but never had the chance to use it on a living target. It was very different, because they moved without grace or rules, and they had guns.

She spun and slashed downwards with her elbow, picked up the man, and shoved him at his partner. She couldn't move away from them, couldn't stand apart at risk of becoming a target. The second man had his gun out, pointed at her, and she caught the hand, knocked it away and kicked. The man knew to expect this, and had moved so it only hit his shin, but Xan had brought her other hand flying at his throat.

Now the first man had his gun up, but Xan ducked, caught the other man's momentum on her back, and tossed him over her shoulder. It was a move she had always been very good at. In sports, in roughhousing, as far back as she knew, she'd known how to flip someone, use her back and the ground to stay safe and send them tumbling over her. Now the first man had to lower his gun so he didn't shoot the second, and Xan, still holding the second's gun and arm, twisted the weapon from him and hit him in the small of the back. He fell and didn't move. But now that she had the gun, she was afraid. _Shoot the legs,_ she thought! _Shoot the hand... it doesn't matter, just shoot!_

The first man was rising, his nose bleeding, holding out the gun. Xan gripped the pistol with both hands, feeling the soft pliability of the trigger, how easy it would be to press... the guns were muzzle to muzzle, and Xan was twitching with bottled-up energy. Now there was no choice but to shoot for the kill... _No. There's always a choice._

The noon sun was rising, cold but bright...

Xan reached into her pocket and threw the watch high into the air. The man's eyes and arm followed it, dropping the gun to catch, both hands extended, squinting... The sun blazed behind the watch, blinding white, reflecting off the metal...

And Xan, angling her head away, jumped and caught the falling star.

Always keep your eyes out of the sun, and keep your eye on the ball. Because no one played baseball over here. No one heard on the radio about how to play the outfield, how to catch a ball in the sun.

She scooped up the other gun, threw them both as high as she could, into the fire escape, and ran for it.

Now she raced for the main entrance of the university, stuffing the watch into her pocket, feet slapping on the crosswalk.

"Where do you think you're going?" An officer, a military man.

_And this is where some psychic paper would really come in handy,_ Xan thought. _Where _do_ I think I'm going?_

_Yeah, but who needs psychic paper? You'd be surprised how often we fool ourselves..._

She made her back as straight as possible. "Inside the building," she said firmly.

"You're not supposed to go inside..."

"No," said Xan, keeping one eye on the grey van nearest to her. "No, I think what you mean is that _civilians_ are not supposed to go inside, which is true, but I _am_ supposed to go inside, and that is also true."

"But... you're not... who are you?"

She'd been frantically working on this, and didn't have much, but she couldn't hesitate. "I'm not at liberty to say," she said calmly.

"You're not... show me some identification!" "I'm sorry, but we can't carry IDs for security reasons, but rest assured I will be able to verify my clearance at a high enough level."

"You are _not_ allowed inside, this is a dangerous..." Something in his eyes gave away a certain level of knowledge. This was not clueless cop stubbornness. It was government cover-up stubbornness.

Xan Looked the man in the eye. "I'm from Torchwood," she said, inspiration flashing down from the blue heavens.

The man gave her a long look, but there was a hint of uncertainty in his eyes.

"You sure?"

"Are you trying to be _smart_?"

"Just... I need an ID..."

"Why?" she demanded.

"To prove you're working with Torchwood."

"Does it need _proving?_" she snapped.

"Er... yes..."

"I suppose you'd like me to contact the Doctor and tell him about this, _would_ you?" She had no idea where the words were coming from, but luck was on her side.

The man's eyes widened, and he stepped aside hastily, giving her a crisp salute. "No, ma'am, yes, _ma'am_. Good luck to you both, ma'am."

Xan vanished into the building.

She ran through the main atrium, which was filled with astonished soldiers and police officers, but they all assumed that she was supposed to be there; she had been allowed in, hadn't she? Xan now had to find the way into the underground facility, assuming, of course, that it was there. Her best hope would be to start in D wing... but thankfully that narrative redundancy would be avoided.

The two men were just opening the door of the stairs as Xan collided with it.

"Sorry!"

"Sorry, excuse me."

"Ow, ow, really sorry about tha-"

Automatic apologies were exchanged before the three realized who the other parties were.

"_Warren! Colin!_ You're alive! I thought you'd been eaten!" Xan grabbed them both by their shoulders and shook them. "You crazy fools, I thought you were dog food!"

"Xan! What's the hurry?"

"Have you seen the Doctor? Do you know where he is?"

Warren and Colin looked at each other carefully. Colin gave her a worried look and asked, rather cautiously, "You want'a go and hit him again?"

"Oh," said Xan. "So you _have_ seen him."

"Yes, and he called you a crazy-" started Colin, and Warren kicked his leg.

"He's inside this giant underground room, and there's computers, and I saw a glass thing and I swear there was someone-"

Xan rounded on Warren. "Where! How do I get there?"

"There's an elevator... in D wing, the service one, big thing. The down arrow, you have to hit it, and then the lowest button... it isn't marked, it's blank, you'll see."

"All right," affirmed Xan and stepped towards the stairwell. "Could you do yourself a favor and be very polite to him?" Warren offered.

"And don't punch him again, or there won't be any face left..."

"What?"

"Nothing. Nothing. Don't hit him."

"I wasn't _planning_ to... Be careful!" She peeled away down the steps.

* * *

><p>Waterhelm Research Facility<p>

Christmas Eve, 2021

Almost Noon

It was mostly algorithms, controls, and automated calibrators, like the computer installed on an airplane. Its purpose was to regulate the reactor, and keep the reaction safe, but it hadn't been designed to do only that. The Doctor had the screwdriver out, pointed at the screen, as files flashed by. And then the screen fuzzed out and turned black.

"Oh," he said sarcastically. "That's _new_." He glared at the computer. Then, next to him, there was a fizzle and on the adjacent computer, the lights around the monitor flicked off. And beside it, the same. One after another, and then the panels of lights in the ceiling went dark, and the humming in the air simply stopped.

* * *

><p>In the falling elevator, Xan felt a sudden shock and crashed to the floor as all movement stopped. She waited for the doors, which did not open. The light on the elevator's roof died. <em>Just like the train... I'm too late.<em>

* * *

><p>Out of the darkness, a blue light ignited. There was no buzzing, only a wash of faint color extending a few feet out in all directions.<p>

"What's going on?" said the Doctor in a very quiet voice. Not that he expected a response, but... as he swung the screwdriver around the room, he spotted the open door.

* * *

><p>Xan frantically pressed the 'door open' button, but there was no response from the machinery. Shouldn't there be an emergency hatch? Or something? Anything? If only she had some kind of lever... It had to be relatively flat, and not brittle, but not too pliable, either... the mirror! To think that she'd ever thank Zeus, Re, and Odin for mirrors, but there one was, as always, placed in the top corner of the box so no one could hide next to the door. If she stood on the tiny ridge of the wood paneling, she could reach it. Xan dug her fingers around the edge and yanked it off as she fell to the floor. The elevator jerked at the impact. <em>Oh, no,<em> she thought. _Is this one of those safety-defying installations I've grown to expect? Held up by a rusty metal wire, no doubt. What's wrong with these people?_

She was able to jam the slightly convex edge of the triangular mirror into the crack between the doors. Thankfully it was a tough material and failed to break when she put her weight on it. The black line of the crack widened into a bar, and Xan dropped the mirror and put her fingers into the gap, shoving it open bit by painful bit.

The space in between the door and the wall was narrow but Xan thought she could fit through. The question was, would there be handholds in the shaft? How far down was the facility? A few feet, or a hundred? Or more?

Painfully, Xan flattened herself against the wall and inched down. But biology had favored her in this way, and it was actually her head that gave her the most trouble. Then she found herself hanging on the lip of the elevator, over a drop into darkness.

* * *

><p>A room. Not as large as the main room, but full of piping and machinery and cluttered tubes. The Doctor, holding the screwdriver like a flashlight, took a few cautious steps inside. In the very center of the room was a tall, clear cell, rounded on the edges and with tubes emanating from it, and an instinct told him that this was not a good thing <em>at all<em>.

Xan fumbled in her pocket for a paper clip, and found three. It was difficult to hang by one hand, but she braced her feet against the wall and held her arm out. The paper clip fell silently, and, wherever it landed, it did that silently, too. But, obviously, a paper clip wouldn't be much use. It weighed less than an ounce.

Holding herself up by a single hand and foot, Xan unlaced a sneaker and let it fall, counting silently. _One... two... thr-_ and then a thump. So... falling speed of 9.8 meters per second per second... and about 2.75 seconds. So... it was... it gained a speed of about ten meters per second every second, so... exponential curve, right... after one second... oh, I give up!

How far could something fall in that amount of time?

Xan slid down the wall and found a couple of new handholds. Was there a ladder? She kept inching downwards, but her left foot had only a sock on, and it was slippery. She removed the sock, and was going to hold it in her mouth but then she decided that would be a _very_ bad idea (and gross) and tied it around her ankle.

She kept moving, and at a certain point she dropped the other shoe. _One..._ and that was as far as she got.

Xan jumped, landed on an angular surface, slipped, and fell onto her shoes. She was probably a little scraped up, but pretty much whole, and that was good enough. Wincing a little, she pulled on her shoes, then realized that she had nothing to wedge the door open with. She'd left that mirror up in the elevator. As she thought about this, she heard a creak from above...

* * *

><p>But even though he knew it was <em>not a good thing at all<em>, the Doctor inched his way across the room towards the column. Closer, closer, close enough to hear the vibrating air, to see the spot where some of the condensation on the glass had been wiped away not long ago, closer, now almost close enough to make out the object inside...

A sudden _bang!_

He jumped, spun around and tried to locate the noise. There was something familiar about it.

_Bang!_ It was even louder this time. Like... almost like someone hitting a thick slab of metal with the palm of their hand.

"Oh," he said, as he walked back into the main room and made his way up to the elevator. "So we're back to _this_ again." He pointed the screwdriver at the door. "What are you doing down here again? I told you two to-" And he stopped.

In the empty shadow of the elevator shaft, instead of the Warren or Colin, there was the thin, tall figure of a girl.

Xan.


	33. Chapter 33

**AN: We're almost at the COOL part :) but before we get there let's see how Xan and the Doctor get along after that row. And by the way, if the part in the middle (you know when you get there) confuses you, remember that the '/' indicates that the words on the left and right are being said at the same time. It's my way of putting in the formatting I had in the original text.**

She had braided her hair down the side, and her hands were raw. Coming around from her brow and spreading out under her right eye, was a faint purple mark, shaped almost like a tattoo. Her green eyes were solemn and in the darkness, the blue light made them very nearly gleam, like a cat's.

Xan stepped out of the shaft very carefully. Into the space where she had been standing, the elevator came hurtling down and crashed to the floor.

"Well," said the Doctor carefully, "I guess _that_ way out's scuppered. Just a quick question: did you do that on purpose, or was it an accident?"

"I suppose you'll have figured out by now what Waterhelm is planning to do?" asked Xan, in a voice as delicate as her steps. It was barely audible, but still had the low, level melody of a narrator.

"Well... I..."

She hadn't looked at the falling elevator. There was a dullness in her eyes.

"Very nearly," said the Doctor, in an icy way.

"Oh." She didn't feel there was anything left to say. It was hard to say anything when she was looking at the Doctor's battered face. Both of them stared at the wounds they had wrought upon the other, and felt numb.

Xan did something a little strange: she reached into one pocket, and it looked like her hand closed around something that gave her comfort. It also sparked up a bit of animosity in her eyes. "So," she said brusquely, "I see that all the power is dead, and since the elevator stopped working as well, I have to surmise that, since it runs on emergency electricity from a generator, power is being redirected somewhere. Probably here. I thought it might be kind to let you know."

"I knew all that," said the Doctor, glaring at her for figuring this out before him. "So you know what this means, don't you?"

But the Doctor was sick of this. He turned back to the open door, and the strange glass cylinder inside it...

Xan barreled into him. "_Don't go in there!_"

He turned around, fuming. "If you touch me _one more time _I swear by the White and Black Guardians I'll-!"

"_Please! Don't go in!_"

"What is _wrong_ with you?" the Doctor hissed.

"There's... something bad in there! I... it doesn't make sense, I just know it's true. Or... something does! Why aren't they _here?_" Xan asked the shadows, suddenly whirling around on her heel. "They should be here, ready for..." She stood rigid for a pin-prick second, and then spun back around. "What time is it? I have a watch, but it's... broken."

He didn't see anything on her wrist. "Why...?"

"Don't waste time, please! Tell me, now!"

Startled, the Doctor reached in his pocket and consulted something hidden in gloom. "It's..."

"Is it noon?"

"Almost... five minutes to..."

"Then we..."

But the Doctor can caught up to her train of thought and zoomed past. "You said all the disturbances happened around noon, didn't you? They either turned noon into afternoon, or the other way around, and it's Christmas Eve, just like in 2019 and you think whatever happened then's going to happen now, but you didn't really _need_ to tell me all that but thanks anyway, now _get OUT_ of here!"

Xan was not cowed in the slightest. The rapid speech set her off, rather than quelled her. "Because all the power's been redirected here, _that's_ why! What I said about the elevator, before! They're trying to muster all the power they can get, and I saw about fifty men in suits with ugly ties out in front of the U, and I think the fact that none of them are in here, in the control room, says that something's going to happen here that we don't want to be around so _you_ get out of here too!"

Even before she finished speaking, the pillar in the center of the room came alive. An arc of electricity surged over the surface, and the great machine glowed with heat.

"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "I think that's _probably a good idea!_" because now the air fizzled with invisible static, beginning to crack and splinter... _splinter hidden tears_... and Xan couldn't keep the image of the 2019 crater out of her mind.

"And do you happen to have any brilliant ideas," he went on, "about how we're going to get _out_?"

Xan touched the metal object in her pocket and listened. "Through the door!" she ordered, grabbing the Doctor's arm, "But _don't touch the glass! Don't look at it! Don't even think about it! Move!_"

And her voice _rang_. It _echoed_. It was like it hit the right note to make your mind resonate, and your will shatter from the vibrations.

They _moved_, and it was like the room hadn't existed, except that Xan was slamming a door behind her and beyond the door were pipes and machines that they _must_ have passed through. The Doctor gaped at her.

"It's this way! Down the hall, to the right, up the steps, just _follow_ me, I know how to get out!"

"_How?_" screamed the Doctor, and when Xan looked back she saw he was turning a little green. "How do you know this?"

"You... you look like you're about to throw up!"

"Timesickness," he gasped. "I've never felt _anything_ this..." and he coughed out a word that Xan couldn't catch. "Twisted! Warped! There's not even a _word_ for it in English! What's happening? How do you know the way out?"

"I met... I met someone who was there... before... he's dead now, they killed him, but he told me..."

"Someone who survived the 2019 explosion? They killed... who's _they?_ What _happened_ to you?"

"Just two of them, Waterhelm, they had guns - _run! Run!_ - they did it before, tried to get rid of the scientists, I bet, and there was this poem, but it doesn't really _mean_ anything, except to me, and he said... the man, it was that homeless man, he'd... maybe had his memory wiped or something, but he - _this way! Go!_ - said there was someone here, and they said something had gotten out, and... like something had gone wrong..."

Everything jarred and went still. The static in the air went away quietly. The Doctor stopped short and turned around.

"We're going back," he said slowly.

Xan almost wanted to agree, but she didn't want to agree with _him_. "You're insane," she said, because it needed saying.

"Alive and crazy," said the man, over his shoulder as he ran back towards the control room. "Could do worse."

"Oh, you just had to say that," yelled Xan, exasperated. "That's not even _fair_." She gave him a decent head start before she went to catch up.

"I don't see why we have to go towards whatever it is..." she began, coming alongside in a few seconds.

"Well, first of all, that's what I do," said the Doctor, slowing, "Is go towards whatever anything is, wherever it is, if it's something I ought to know about. And second of all, there is no 'we.' 'We' are not going to see whatever it is, 'I' am going to see what it is, and 'I' does not mean you."

"You said 'we'," growled Xan. "I heard you. You said, 'We're going back.'" She even got the accent right. "I apologize for thinking that this meant me, because I didn't know there was anyone else around. My mistake."

"I did _not_ say 'we'!"

"Yes, you did!"

"Well, then it was a slip of the tongue. And from now on, when I say 'we', I do _not _mean you. From now on, 'we' means myself and anyone else but you!"

Xan gave him a long, forlorn stare. "You're a little sore about all this," she said sullenly.

"Sore! Yes, I think that's _exactly_ the word I was looking for! Sore! As in aching! As in _pain! _You see this? See what you did? Yes, I should think it's rather sore, come to think of it! D'you see it? All that soreness? Very sore, yes! And d'you know what else? Do you want to hear what someone said? Said about my face? Gross! That's exactly the word they used! My face is gross! This face, that I was so _very_ pleased not to lose, now is 'gross'! Thanks to you! Do you really think I would _want_ you around? That there would be any kind of 'we' that would include you? You... are you even _listening_ to me?"

"Should I be?" she asked, refusing to look at him. "Would the world end if I wasn't? Would anything actually happen at all if I wasn't?" As she turned her head, the light caught her cheek, which was in some places beginning to turn a dark plum. Her expression was now one of stoic calm. "I don't think you need to worry about your gorgeous face, though," she added, in tones to suggest that this description was _not_ a position she subscribed to, "It heals itself anyway, doesn't it?"

"Well... _eventually_, I suppose... Like anyone _else's_ does... what kind of _excuse_ is that to punch someone, 'it heals itself anyway?'"

"It's not an excuse, but..."

"Just turn around and go home! If you know the way out, then good! If you came crawling back here to make up for it..."

"I didn't," she said levelly. "As I think you may already know."

"No! I know you didn't! This is all about control," yelled the irate Time Lord. "You trying to control me, trying to-"

"Oh, mom, you're ruining my life," said Xan in a nasty, mocking way.

"Now you shut up for just one second! You hit me because you wanted to feel more powerful than me, and you think I'm scared of you now, don't you? Go _home!_ This isn't your world! You don't _belong _here!"

"Anything happening on my planet is my business. More so, I might add, than yours."

"So now we're back to this, are we?"

"What is this 'we' you speak of? Because if it isn't me, who else?"

_Good_

_question..._

"What was that?" Xan suddenly hissed.

"What was what?"

"I... I don't know what it is, that's why I asked!"

"Well, what did it sound like?"

"Like... like a voice... haven't you ever had that, where you think you hear someone say your name, or 'Hello' or that kind of... and there isn't anyone there? You don't remember hearing it, but you know you _heard_ it... It was like that. I think. I hope."

"Are you sure?" asked the Doctor, apprehensive.

"No."

"Well, that's not very..."

"It's true, though."

"Shhh..."

Xan quieted instantly. Pride was one thing, and survival was another.

_ssshhh..._ whispered the reflected voice.

Then,

_Don't mind me_

_I'm just an echo..._

"I swear I heard something," said Xan. "I heard a voice."

_No..._

_you didn't hear_

_anything..._

"Doctor?" Xan squeaked. "It's talking to me! Can't you _hear_ it?"

Laughter echoed in her mind; silent, wicked laughter.

"Are you... all..." He couldn't bring himself to say it.

_Poor_

_deaf man_

_He never hears_

_anything at all_

_If I don't want_

_him_

_to..._

She sank to her knees, clutching her head, as the words rang with a sadistic timbre in her mind.

_You're_

_trapped_

_now, aren't_

_you? Just like_

_me._

_Just __like __me._

_Just_

_like_

_me._

Over and over, painful and feverish from repetition, louder and louder. "It's in my head," she whispered, rocking back and forth. "It's in my head, it's in my head make it go away go away go away _GET OUT!_ Get out... what's happening? It's talking to me, help me, help me..."

The transformation was so sudden that the Doctor forgot that he was supposed to hate her. "Xan! Tell me what's happening! What do you hear? Are you all right?" He rushed to her side, a horrible fear overtaking him.

_Do you know_

_what it's_

_**LIKE?**_

_To hear it in your mind __over and_

_over_

_again and __again_

_again and __**again**_

_**again**__ and_

_**again**__?_

_It's not very_

_**nice**_

_Not at all_

_Not that __you'd __know._

_You wouldn't_

_understand_

_what it feels like_

_years and years_

_forever and ever_

_What am I doing here anyway_

_?_

_Half-dead_

_half-_

_dreaming_

_Now_

_I_

_am_

_**AWAKE!**_

Her skin was freezing cold. Xan huddled against the wall, pressing her hands against her ears, as if to block out the intrusion. "Something's... here..." she got out. "Half... dead... half... dreaming... get OUT!" It was agony, and not only that, it was being violated, it was being imposed upon. Xan squeezed her eyes shut and tried to make her mind into a solid wall, tried to gather some kind of defense, but she didn't know how.

"Xan! Xan, can you hear me?"

"Ye-es..." she groaned, barely audible.

"There's a voice? Is that it? You hear a voice?"

"_Yes_," she mouthed, letting loose, as the only sound, a tiny breath of air on the tail end of the word.

_Am I __hurting_

_you?_

_SO __sorry_

_who_

_are you anyway?_

The Doctor tried to remove the girl's palms from her forehead, feeling as he did so the tension in her muscles, how her wrists felt like they were laced with cables, and her fingers were so rigid that they almost seemed brittle. As he uncurled them, he felt as though they would snap off instead of loosen with enough pressure.

_Just a_

_girl_

_a scientist_

_Very __intelligent, no_

_doubt __how_

_quaint._

_I do __like that __word_

_quaint_

_Very __useful_

_at times..._

_And you __are quaint_

_and __**weak**_

_And lost_

_displaced_

_cut down_

_... fallen..._

The two voices in her head: her own, thrashing and spitting like a wild beast, raging and cornered, screaming at the thing to GET OUT GET OUT, and this horrible parasite, oily words slipping over her mind and _clenching_ every so often, a stabbing pain, the leech, the living migraine, the invader.

Then, a third.

_Who is here? / t'yr a anon?_

_WHO ARE YOU? / __**t'yr ty l'yn?**_

Echoes in her mind, echoes of something else, something foreign. When the first voice spoke, there was a constant reverberation, pounding away in her skull. The second voice... it was like a dozen voices in one, with the same person speaking them. It was golden, and ringing... And it was _familiar_.

_I don't need_

_YOUR HELP!_

she managed to get out, though it was difficult to form words that stayed as one thought for long. They were always shifting, always changing, wanting to turn into images, sounds, or wanting to move out of her mind and into her voice box. The first voice made her writhe in anger, but the second was almost worse. It made her feel flawed and insignificant and childlike. It made her chest flame with embarrassment.

_Well, that's gratitude for you... / __balin a aubon' ty borot'ney wdlwn_

_But / __nw.r_

_I think you do. / __y ty main'i u.t _

_Now leave her alone! / __v'lai e'k eraon __**ilem**__._

The intruding voices began to die away. The other, the first, had jarred in Xan's mind at the touch of the second, and silenced itself hurriedly.

_Well, good __now_

_get out_

_please_

_thank_

_you so very kindly._

Thought speak isn't like regular speech. Every word has a tone, an underpinning, and a set of emotions, connected phrases, and thoughts, disconnected from the others.

_I was only __trying __/ __dae'i loc'__u_

_to help you, / __ty longon _

_Xan, honestly... / __Star, taupwlis _

And then her thoughts were her own. The Doctor took his hands from her temples and rocked backwards.

"That was a little ungrateful..."

"I'm... _not_... sorry, but I didn't want any more... in my head... the other thing, it's being... it's not you, it's just that... I don't know how to say this but... okay, I do, actually. My mind... is my own, it's a safe place, not an open book... it makes me feel... naked and unprotected, if there's something else there..." She shivered. "I'm cold..." she mumbled, and got to her feet. For a moment Xan looked very faint, and then she toughened up. "It's here, isn't it?"

"What is? The voice?"

"The... _no_, the _thing_ that got out."

"But that's its voice, so you _did _mean the voice, you just disagreed with me because you like doing that..."

"No... no... I didn't. Don't start this all up again..."

"Start what? Start..."

"I have a _suggestion_," said Xan loudly, "to make, in case you are ready to keep this up even while the world's ending..."

"I'm not..."

"Listen. _Please_."

The Doctor rolled his eyes but subsided.

"Can you just pretend, for just however long is necessary, that I am someone else?"

"What?"

Her voice cracked slightly. "Pretend I'm someone else. Not Xan. Forget her. Xan left the building, I came in, who are you, young lady, well, who are you then, you explain, and now we're just at a sort of cordial acquaintanceship, so no pointless arguing... yet."

"Well, you argued with me pretty pointlessly when I first met you anyway..."

"But you didn't _hate_ me then... I just don't want to waste time arguing... can't you and I just... suppress our loathing until a better time? Just pretend for now that nothing... nothing happened?" She shut her eyes and rubbed the lids.

"Do I have to _like_ you at all?"

"No," said Xan shortly. "I wouldn't ask _that_ much of you."

He'd meant it as a joke. "So... is a sort of wary ambivalence all right?"

She smiled weakly. "More than enough, yes. No one's ever been warily ambivalent about me before." Then a memory pulled her back to the present. "Now... I... am... awake... That's what it said! Now I am awake! Oh, great!" she cried in hopeless sarcasm. "That's wonderful! It's awake!"

"Yeah, those aren't really words I'm very... eager to hear. Not right now. Not... ever, actually. To be quite honest with you. Um. Was there anything else it said?"

Haltingly, Xan repeated the words she'd heard.

"No," whispered the Doctor. "It can't be. That's not possible."

Xan was one for cold logic in the face of vagueness. "Then either it isn't what you think it is or it actually is possible after all."

"What is?"

"I don't _know_," said Xan, annoyed. "Whatever 'it' is that isn't possible. But if it isn't possible, then it can't be true, and if it is true, it can't be impossible."

The Doctor had to admit this was praiseworthy reasoning. What highly irritated him was that it was his job to say things like that. "I _knew_ that," he said haughtily. "I was just being dramatic."

"I know you were. What isn't possible, then?"

"What I'm thinking," said the Doctor grimly. He vanished around a corner.

Xan followed without a thought.

The air was very still, glassy as the surface of a twilight lake. It was static and slow, so it felt like it should be thick and heavy, but it was not. It was an empty, buoyant chill, as ungrounded as outer space. But there was also _sharpness_, and it stung, so even walking felt like wading through nettles, or a swarm of tiny biting insects. All was quiet.

The only shred of warmth came from the metal shell in her pocket.

She saw the Doctor reach for the door of the room, the one nestled in between this corridor and the control room. Xan began to speak, to make some objection, not quite afraid but at the stage of terrible uneasiness. Her voice caught. It died. She forced the dead sound out anyway. "Don't go in..."

"You said that before." The Doctor moved away from the door. "Twice. Why?"

"Because... I don't know... bad feeling, maybe?" It wasn't the kind of bad feeling that foretold of impending doom. It was bad enough that doom actually could have impended already, and reached the present, and this bad feeling _was _the doom itself, or a byproduct of it. How could you explain that you'd been here before? In a dream? Or just severe _déjà vu_... The random chemical idiosyncrasies of the human mind? "It's a... _very_ bad feeling," she said, though as soon as she said it the only thing she felt was stupid. "That sounded really stupid, didn't it?"

"Well, it didn't sound smart."

"Go ahead and open the door. I don't care. Bring it on."

"You're sure?"

"What's the worst that could happen?"

"Are you joshing me?" asked the Doctor, horrified. "You'd go and say _that?_ Do you have some kind of death wish?"

"No. It's more like a feeling of misplaced invulnerability, to be honest. Is that normal?"

"You're asking for, what, a diagnosis?"

"Maybe," Xan said indifferently.

Suspiciously, the Doctor asked, "Is it like a feeling that everything is just a dream so whatever happens, it won't affect you in any way?"

"Like a dream, yes. Or a movie. I... I don't think anything's real." She said it so matter-of-factly. Some part of her had decided that nothing mattered, when it all came down to it.

"Oh, _that_," said the Doctor. "I suppose you feel tired? Wasted? You want to go lie down somewhere, you don't really care where, and when you wake up everything will be normal? That's it? Adrenaline's all used up, don't really care if you live or die, what? Ah. Right!" he said brightly, with an evil smile. "I can fix that!"

Before Xan could react, the Doctor had pulled open the door, caught her by the arms, and threw her into the darkness, closing the door behind him with a _crunch_.

Xan yelped, spun around, and slammed her fists on the door. "_Are you crazy?_" she screamed. "_LET ME OUT! Let me out of here or I'll kill you!_" The room was absolutely pitch black. There could have been someone standing a few feet away from her, and she wouldn't have known. And the shadows were very pregnant with forms, with faces and hands and claws, and whatever was inside the glass column... The door was locked. She rattled the handle, kicked at it, unable to see a single thing. She could just feel the shadows creeping up behind her, reaching out with twitching, invisible hands. Some pressure lock in Xan's mind burst. She faced the darkness. "_AND IF ANYTHING OR ONE IN HERE TRIES ANYTHING,_" Xan shrieked in terror-driven fury, "_I'LL SWEAR I'LL KILL YOU TOO!_"

Even as her eyes adjusted, the darkness just grew, with more tangible shapes, and she imagined sounds inside of it, the sound of ghostly phantasms sliding along the floor, creeping towards her, ready to...

When she stopped and thought about it how to finish that sentence, she realized that if the imagined monsters ever got around to doing whatever it was they were prepared to do, it would be a relief. The anticipation was the worst part. She couldn't imagine anything all that terrifying _happening_, but was breaking out into cold sweat over something _about_ to be done.

Behind her, there was a rap on the door. "So how are you going with the not caring about anything?" came the Doctor's voice through the metal.

"_LET ME OUT!_"

"Not so well, I see."

"_OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!_"

"I don't know. Maybe I'll wait and let you calm down a little first..."

"_YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT'S IN HERE!_"

"Easy cure for that mid-adventure ennui. Works every time."

"_YOU SADISTIC MONSTER!_"

"And it does a good job on hiccups, too."

"_WHAT IF THERE'S SOMETHING IN HERE?_"

"Well, that would be a thing, wouldn't it? If there was something?" The Doctor had never felt this refreshed in his entire life, even though he knew she would probably punish him for it. He grinned and leaned against the door. She would probably be begging pretty soon. He might even be merciful. Maybe strike a deal. She would have to do whatever he said for the rest of her life.

Then he realized that there was no sound from the other end of the door. "You still in there?" he asked.

No response, but he could hear a muffled noise from within.

"Xan?"

Nothing.

The Doctor plunged his hand into his coat and found the sonic screwdriver. As he unlocked the door and peeked inside, he began to feel his grin slipping from his face.

"Alexandra?"

No response.

"It's not... funny..." He held up the screwdriver for light. There was no sign of anyone, but he could hear a faint rustling in the dark.

"Xan? Where are you? Just say something... okay, I'm sorry. That was stupid. Are you there? Where... where are you?"

The Doctor pointed the flashlight screwdriver in an arc, wondering what exactly he was going to do if anything... if there really was... How could he have been so stupid? Just because she'd... _made a fool of you in front of all those people_... but he didn't _care _about that! That didn't matter! And she hadn't even... really, she hadn't actually been _wrong_. How could he have been so...

As he swung the screwdriver around, it suddenly caught on something pale and round and very, _very_ close.

The Doctor nearly screamed, but held it in as he tripped backwards, landing against a net of pipes. He lay against the metal, eyes wide, holding the screwdriver out in desperate self-defense.

A thump. It was soft and suppressed. A tap. Little noises, nondescript, ambient sounds, but with out proper placement they could have been anything. He edged along the pipe, feeling for the wall.

His hand touched something that moved.


	34. Chapter 34

**AN: So sorry for the long wait! I'll keep posting and writing as fast as possible! Thanks to all reviewers.**

There was a brief moment of panic and confusion, and then the Doctor found the screwdriver and managed to turn on the light.

"AH!"

"Whoa!"

"Xan?"

"Oh. It's _you_."

"Sorry." They both radiated relief.

"Can you get off of me, please?"

"Get off of you? I'm not..."

"Personal... bubble...invaded..."

"Sorry! Sorry!" He tried to untangle himself.

"What were you doing?"

"What do you mean, what was I doing?"

"All those noises?"

"What? That wasn't me! And what were you doing sneaking up behind me, anyway?"

"Sneaking up behind... I wasn't sneaking up behind you! That was you, doing that!"

"I thought that was you."

"I thought that was you."

They stared at one another in confusion, huddled around the dim glow of the sonic screwdriver.

"Turn the lights on," said Xan, sounding panicky.

"I _can't_. If there isn't any power, then the lights won't come on, sonic screwdriver or no."

"Make the sonic screwdriver brighter, then."

"I can make it a little brighter, but it won't help you see more. It's like a flashlight, not a light bulb."

"Yeah, that didn't really help at all," said Xan. She pushed at the screwdriver, trying to point it towards the room.

"Let go of my..."

"I want to see what's in the room!"

"_My_ sonic screwdriver. No touching."

"Then _point the damn thing somewhere else!_"

"Fine!"

The beam illuminated the room, moving slowly across the floor.

"Over there," said Xan, grabbing his arm and redirecting it. "Point it over there, you didn't..."

"Stop doing that!"

"Show what's over there..."

"Okay. Look. Nothing."

"I just... wanted to make sure..." She stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled out her broken smartphone. "This had a pretty good flashlight in it... could you fix just that?"

"Let me see it." He turned it over and opened up the back, the buzzing blue light moving over the uncovered organs of the phone.

"The light comes from the top..." Xan started to say.

"Oi! Stop telling me what to do!"

"I'm just... unlock that piece first, then the..."

"Stop it! No more... backseat screwdriving!"

"I'm not... oh, ha ha..."

"There!" He handed her two small parts connected by a few wires. "Now be _quiet_." Making a face, Xan held up the piece of circuitry with the bulb and the light clicked on. The two circles, blue and white, danced over the walls, sometimes striking a metal pipe, or a cluster of tubes. Following the twists of the ducts led to empty storage vats, to chambers of clear liquid, to the ceilings and walls and to the translucent column in the center of all the pipes and wires. It was capped by a metal funnel from which extended the largest tubes and pipes and wires, and had a fat black base, thus creating easily the impression of a scaled-up, upside-down model of a bacteriophage.

Except it wasn't a column of _glass _anymore. Xan thought there had been glass, but there wasn't, not anymore. The thing was hollow

The Doctor drew closer to it, and Xan reluctantly followed suit. "I rememb- the man I talked to mentioned this," she said nervously, though she was unsure if he actually had or not. "But if the 2019 explosion happened here, then why isn't this place damaged? Was it rebuilt?"

"Must have been." He moved even closer, and Xan couldn't help but wince slightly. "I wonder why." Now the dream memories were rushing in faster, toppling over one another as she stared at the column. If her memory was a puzzle, then it was down to the last pile of pieces, and each one took only seconds to place, racing to completion.

The Doctor took another step and there was a crunch. He flicked his light down. "Glass," he said, a bit unnecessarily. It was obvious what it was, and what had happened.

"W-when we were out in the hallway? It broke..." Xan kept hearing the words in her mind... _Now I am awake_..._ now I am awake_... "Whatever got out was in _here_..."

She turned her button light to the interior of the column, and the light reflected off wires and tubes dangling in the empty space. Mist rolled out of it in great clouds. Xan swung around and swept her light around the room, trying to think if she'd heard anything during the brief period of utter darkness. Little, strange noises... What sound did the door at the other end of the room make? Had there been time for the thing to exit?

"Weird glass," the Doctor commented. He held up a piece and shone his light through it. "Looks like it's not just glass... that's a bit odd..."

"Why does that matter?" Xan asked, through gritted teeth. "Why the _glass_, Doctor?"

He stepped down into the center of the room, now searching the ceiling. "You're scared now, aren't you?" he murmured.

"Yes, I am," Xan spat. "Why not? It's just a thing that happens under circumstances like these."

"Good," the Doctor said. "I'm glad you're scared."

Xan couldn't believe she had just heard that. He didn't like her much right now, that was for sure. But he wasn't vindictive... well, except for locking her in here...

"Stupid people look for thrills. Smart people get scared. Use your fear, don't try to defeat it. Did you hear anything before?"

Her reason told her that she hadn't. That she'd just imagined everything... "Yes," Xan admitted. "I did. In retrospect it sounded a lot like a door scraping open. If someone was trying to be very quiet, that is."

The Doctor whirled his light back around to her. Xan put a hand over her eyes. "Ouch! Damnit! Now I can't see anything..."

"Did you hear it close?" the Doctor asked, still very casually. "Right after you heard it open, did you hear it close?"

"I don't _think_ I did." She thought hard. "I didn't. Not right after. The pitch went up, but not down again. Open, not closed."

"Well, I'd _say_ that it's rather strange that the door over there is closed-" he pointed his light at it and Xan gulped. "- but looking at this glass, I don't think it's so unbelievable..." He held up the glass again. "Circuits," he said. "The pane was a circuit. Electronics going through it... nothing complex. It's as simple as a bit of string..."

"Stretched over a door," Xan said as realization hit her. "A _tripwire_... oh, sh-"

"SHH!" the Doctor ordered.

Xan instinctively stepped closer to the center, where the Doctor was. "What?"

Her night vision was returning, slowly. The drops of mist in the air sparkled and flowed where the two lights touched them. Clouds rolled out from the circle of shattered glass, invisible for the most part. But where there was light, the effect was striking. It moved like a specter, reaching with tattered fingers towards life, only to fade away. It had a fruity, chemical scent that dulled the senses and pulled soft blinds over vision. Whatever it was, it wasn't simple steam.

Did there seem to be more of it? It was hard to tell in the dark room.

The Doctor held up a hand. Instantly Xan was on high alert, paying close attention. "Do you smell pears?" He sniffed, and then gagged. "Oh god that's _horrible_."

"Doctor?"

"Yes..." He had his nose covered.

"I thought you were going to say something important," said Xan reproachfully. She shone her button-light into the mist. "Not pears."

"I 'ate pears," said the Doctor through his sleeve.

"There must be organic compounds in this mist," said Xan knowledgeably. "Benzene rings. They smell like fruit. And what is up with you and fruit?"

"There's certainly a lot of this mist," said Xan carefully. "I think it's from the column. And I happen to like pears."

"No you don't," said the Doctor. "You're just saying that. No one likes pears. Not even you." She snorted. "Nothing wrong with them," Xan said defensively. "Why are we having this discussion, though?"

"I don't..." the Doctor slowly began, but cut himself off. He was the rare person with the ability to actually interrupt himself. "Morpheotryptylbenzone!" he exclaimed.

"That's... not a real chemical formula," Xan pointed out carefully. "You're just stringing words together..."

"Oh, do be quiet, Xan, and stop _contradicting_ people," hissed the Doctor, flapping his hands at her. "I know what I'm talking about. And that's only the shortened name. It's a compound used to induce a highly unstable comatose state..."

"Why would anyone want to...?"

"It's not used medically, obviously, it's a weapon! This room's filling with it! No wonder I hate pears! They smell like MTB, like poison gas!"

"Survival instinct?" Xan suggested. Her eyes jerked to the ceiling, to the walls, to the mist. "Please tell me those open pipes up there aren't breathing mist on us... oh god. They are. They are. Is it like _neurotoxin_ by any chance? Oh god, I hated that level," she gabbled. "It was so stressful with GLaDOS talking the whole time and the gas and the countdown and those rocket things-"

"But _how_ could this energy company have it? You can't find it on _Earth_... not in this time... it's really, _really_ rare!"

The pear-mist flooded the room. Xan wiped her arm across her face and tried to get a handle on herself. Her eyes were stinging. "So the room's set up to gas us to death if he gets out?"

"No, to _near_-death! That's worse!"

"_Worse_?" she coughed.

The Doctor staggered for the door, out of sight. "Because if they don't want to kill us with gas, they want to do something even more horrible!" Then came the sound of the sonic screwdriver on a high setting. "I can't get it open!"

Xan thought that the smoke would have an anesthetic effect. She expected it to be like chloroform, and braced herself to keep wakefulness. Instead, the gas began to fill her lungs like foam, a suffocating mass that burned and enveloped her. Drowning in water may have been similar, but far preferable. Numbness came in the form of fire, and when the pain receded for a moment, she felt her arms and back and side pressing against the floor. She struggled to her feet, but gravity pitched and listed and threw her down again.

"The door's... the lock's fused! Melted into the wall! Just like the elevator... Xan? Xan! Where are you? I can't see-"

Even if it had been open, how could she reach it? Xan pinched her nose shut, held her breath, and even the lack of oxygen was better than the presence of this smothering mist. It cleared her vision, restored her balance, enough to point the button-light upwards, to see the tubes in the ceiling breathing toxic wind. There wasn't much time, or air, left, but she could hold her breath for longer than she could last in the mist.

But it was getting through the pores of her skin as well, because even mammals breathe through their skins, like amphibians do, just not to such a degree. Xan swung around, hand clamped over her mouth and nose, looking for an escape.

When she stumbled and fell onto a curved, smooth surface, Xan felt a light of an idea take root in her asphyxiated brain. She hit her fist against the metal, and the hollow ringing filled her mind. "_PIPES!_" she yelled, with her last breath of air, and fell, her head crashing against the floor, as the pear-smelling mask pressed itself over her face.

* * *

><p>She woke up to the taste of floor, hair, something she couldn't quite identify, and, unfortunately, pears. Her skull ached. Everything ached, of course, but there was a pervasive presence somewhere high on her forehead, bisected by the hairline. There was the sound of shuffling feet and rustling clothes and then a cold hand fell on her forehead while another propped up her head.<p>

Xan had the strange feeling that she was lying on a hammock, but only if said hammock was hard and smooth and metallic. It was the way her feet were higher that her chest. She thought back to what had happened, and while her mind swam, there was just enough willpower left for her to weakly think _Aha._ She whispered it under her breath. It was a little deduction, but for her dizzy mind it felt like the discovery of the century.

"Are you all right? Xan? Are you awake?" The voice echoed.

It was the Doctor.

That was good. The Doctor was good.

She tried to speak. "Hello...?" It sounded awful, all garbled and slow.

"Can you remember anything?" said the echoey voice that was the Doctor's. "How's your head feeling?"

_With its nerve tissue, silly. You can't _feel_ with anything else._

"You look... blimey, you look terrible. I hadn't noticed how bad it was... Must have been an extra-strong batch..."

_Batch of what?_

"Come on..." He sounded a little nervous now. "Say something. You sure you're all right?"

Slowly Xan cracked her sticky eyelids open and looked up. First she registered the Doctor's worried face, then the surroundings. The world had turned into a PVC tube meshed with copper foil, like the halls of a space station. It was only about four feet in diameter. Xan lifted a hand and looked at her skin, which felt odd. It was pale and stiff, but color was beginning to return. The Doctor looked a little pale too, and she'd thought it was from worry but maybe it was a side effect of the gas. There was pain, but pain had become a constant presence for her by now, and it meant she was alive.

Her head marginally clearer, Xan struggled to sit up, and the Doctor pushed her back down, gently but very firmly. "You nearly _died_," he said, almost angrily. "Just sit there and let me look at you."

He did just that - look at her - and nothing else. The Doctor stared at the girl for a very long time, like he was feeding off of the sight of her.

"What are you doing?" Xan asked cautiously.

"Shush. I'm looking at you. Keep on being alive."

More awkward staring.

"All right. I'm through," the Doctor finally announced. "You're definitely alive. Can you sit up by yourself or would you like some help?"

"It took you that long to figure out I wasn't dead?" She didn't ask for his help but he gave it anyway, putting an arm around her waist and balancing her against the curving wall of the pipe. "Go figure. Do you know what kind of pipe this is?"

"Airflow, probably. I'll bet this goes into the reactor. If they're using funnel dissociation..."

"You're still looking at me," Xan interrupted, waving a hand in front of the Doctor's eyes as if to disrupt an invisible cobweb of fixation. "I assure you most heartily, I am not dead."

His dead expression broke and he reached out and playfully flicked a bit of hair back from over her forehead. "Glad to hear it," he said, smiling. "Now let's find our way out of here. Does that sound reasonable?"

"First," Xan said. "What happened? I passed out; you're going to have to fill in the details for me."

"Nothing important," he said quickly. "I heard you say something about pipes, and I was surprised because that was rather clever and I hadn't even thought of it even with all the times I've crawled through ventilation systems... yeah, so I realized that you'd realized that a big fat air pipe wouldn't be all gassy and poisonous, and we might even fit, so I pulled you over to the nearest one and got you inside-"

"How?" Xan demanded. "They haven't got _doors_ or anything..."

He grinned. "I made one."

"Again, how?"

Smiling like a devil, he held up something thin and grey. "Sonic."

Something in his tone made Xan not want to ask how a benign thing like a sonic screwdriver could cut open metal. The Doctor seemed to like pretending that it wasn't a weapon, and Xan could believe that he never _used_ it like one... "Scalpel setting?" she guessed lamely.

"It's made of _plastic_. How much heat do you need to cut through? Sound vibrates particles, makes heat."

"It's _high-grade industrial plastic_," she corrected. "A _lot_ of heat."

The Doctor waved a hand. "Potato, potahto."

"What happened after that?" Xan encouraged. "You made a door, you get us in..."

To her surprise, the Doctor was starting to go red. "Nothing important," he repeated.

"CPR?" Xan asked. She raised an eyebrow. "Kiss of life sort of thing? I _was_ asphyxiating, you know." Was that all there was to blush about? Come on. "That _is_ what people do when other people can't breathe, isn't it?"

The Doctor nodded very fast. "Yes. Right. Not important. Kind of obvious, really. You know, that kind of thing..."

_... mist had started to fill the pipe. The walls felt like they were squeezing tighter and tighter together, shrinking into nothingness. The Doctor found his screwdriver, grabbed the pipe door, slammed it in place, and sealed it shut. Then he wheeled around in the cramped space, bending over the ashen girl in horror. "Xan! Please! Wake up!" He took her face in his hands, feeling for a living mind. "Xan!"_

_He felt her chest, felt the stillness, and then pressed hard, forcing it to beat. _But the gas isn't poisonous! _he thought furiously. _It doesn't kill!

In _this_ amount? _cut in another voice that was also his. _For a human? Of course it does! Look at her skin! Look at her face! She's dying!

_The Doctor bowed over the girl, pushing her heart into action. "You're not dead," he whispered. "You're not dead. Come on, Xan, live!" The gas must have stopped the oxygen flow to her brain, and blocked the expulsion of carbon dioxide. He'd forgotten this event would be fatal for humans. How could he have forgotten?_

_Lungs. Needed to move. There's plenty of air for you now, no more pain, no more burning, you can breathe again! He put a hand over her nose, closing it off, prized open her lips, and pressed his mouth to hers, feeling her chest rise and fall artificially as he worked her diaphragm for her, trying to tell her body to breathe, to live. Then he moved back to the heart. Silly, breakable humans. Short-lived, delicate, fleeting creatures. All mind, and no body. All soul and no substance. But such souls... The Doctor bent over the girl again, feeling her cold skin, her dry mouth, her tranquil, fading thoughts._

_"You have to live!" he whispered, holding her in his arms, trying to reach out into her mind and will her alive. "Don't give up! You never give up! You silly apes, with your crazy, deluded, beautiful humanity; you never give up! Never! Don't give up on me now! Do you hear me, Xan? You're going to live, and we'll save the world, you and me, and even if you hate me and want to stay here on Earth, you'll live to do it! Come on! You'll get your PhD's and a life and everything you want, and no one will ever think you're crazy or hate you because they're jealous, because they'll just have to live with what you are, and that's brilliant, Xan! Do you hear me? You're brilliant, and you can't die!"_

_And he leaned down and kissed her._

_And then he felt her single fragile heart begin to thump softly, but quickly, inside her ribs, and heard the intake of air, felt her breath on his cheek. She didn't open her eyes, didn't come out of her sleep, but the Doctor heard her thoughts grow louder, clearer, stronger. He rocked back in dazed relief, wondering if he had gone mad. His head was very light, no doubt because of the gas, but what on Earth had he been thinking? What possessed him to-?_

_His next thought was: if she finds out, she'll kill me._

"CPR," he said staunchly. "Like you said."

* * *

><p>London<p>

December 24th, 2021

Noon

The great wheels of the clock tower, Big Ben, rolled into alignment and the bells began to play in the noon. A flock of birds, hardy enough to winter over, took to the air, as they did every hour, surprised as ever at the noise their otherwise calm roost made.

Wings fluttered, feathers fell. The sun peeked out from behind a cloud, and stared down at the world. Wind blew through the streets, kicking up snowdrifts and dead leaves. Below the pavement, the trains whirled through the dark tunnels, carrying the lifeblood of the city to and fro.

It was they that halted first, as the tracks went cold. People rose from their seats, eyes inquiring or exasperated. The trains stopped moving, and the stoplights followed. Cars slowed, puzzled, and some had to brake quickly to avoid a crash. The automated computers compensated, but then, one after another, quietly passed away. The video advertisements plastered onto the flat stretches of the city forgot about the movie, the food, the air freshener they were selling, and all started marketing black. Lights dimmed and died, refrigerators stopped cooling, televisions stopped running, thermostats and heaters surrendered to the winter.

And every living thing, from the birds to the commuters to the large but undocumented population of extraterrestrials, looked around in mild surprise, paused what they were doing, and stayed that way. The hammer was halfway to striking out the twelfth bell in the tower, but _it never landed._


End file.
